


Utopia

by queen_mycroft



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Everybody Dies, M/M, Post-Finale, but then cute, hilson, hilson is love, house is such a PRECIOUS FLOWER, like a subtle mix of angst and acerbic humor, what am i on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3713836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_mycroft/pseuds/queen_mycroft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer: massive spoilers for the series finale. Triggers for pretty brief suicidal thoughts. </p><p> </p><p>They both know it. They say it to each other in looks and tentative touches, when House is rubbing Wilson's back when he feels as if he's about to hack up his lungs. In those moments, he doesn't have enough headspace to think, "House loves me," but sometimes he doesn't have to think it. Sometimes it's just his touch on Wilson's back and a few gentle words swathed in sarcasm. </p><p>He knows. They both know.</p><p>And what if Wilson was a star? And what if House was the universe, and what if he loved Wilson and let the oceans of time dwindle so he could be with him; only him, forever?</p><p>What if there was a utopia?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Utopia

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm a new kid on the block - I don't really know how to "ao3" but I have slight faith in myself. I hope you enjoy aw c:

Heaven is a horrible concept for the dying man. Wilson once read a book on it. It was very short, and very illiterate - he could have sworn that it was a meta written by a ninth grader about death.

Its title was something along the lines of, "Managing Grief in Terminal Patients With the Help of the Lord," and although Wilson was a great (agnostic) grief counselor - hell, is - he picked it up and read all two hundred and twenty three pages in one go. House chastised him when he found the book, hiding under a chair.

It said some useless stuff about the Lord, asking for absolution, amnesty. How there was something beyond this life, something to look forward to. Golden streets and your loved ones and those in touch with God, all praising him in this glorious ruby palace, a spiritual ecstasy rippling through the crowds. (Of course, Wilson would later admit to himself that he'd rather spend his time skydiving and watching reality television and fucking/fucking with House.) 

This man wrote about heaven like it was some magnificent truth. He wasn't even a Jew, so he said some crap about Jesus that Wilson didn't really believe, and when he was done with the book he threw it under the chair because it made him so goddamn angry he could hardly think.

Heaven wouldn't stop him from drowning in his own lungs. Religion wouldn't keep his lunch down, and God wouldn't keep his heartbeat steady as it fluttered into cessation. There was nothing about heaven that appealed to Wilson, besides the fact that it wasn't hell. That book didn't manage his grief, or even cauterize the anxiety. It perpetuated it. It made Wilson freeze up and pray to Jehovah that there was no heaven, or if there was, that He'd spare him of it. Send him to the place with the darkness, eternal emptiness.

He figures that's better than the alternative: fear. Of everything. He'd wake up in the morning and know that judgement was coming soon, with no comfort in the knowledge, like an inmate about to be admitted or put on death row. There is no positive, only a lesser of two evils that Wilson can't choose between. Somehow, the presence of a higher power doesn't comfort him like it should. He should be going to church on Sundays. Celebrating the Sabbath and holding Jewish parties and communions and lighting his menorah that's currently rotting deep inside a closet. Instead he wakes up and he makes cereal and pushes it away because he doesn't feel like eating, and then he goes to brush his teeth and he notices how concave and haggard he looks in the mirror, yet is too fatigued to anything about it.

But then - utopia.

What of that? What if, when Wilson dies, there's a shining light and mix of chemicals and then he's reawakened in a small seaside house on the coast of Italy? And House is there, and he's making them coffee in their one bedroom home and he doesn't have a limp and Wilson can't quite remember why that's important, but he doesn't care; he doesn't care at all. What if he dies, and only _then_ can he be happy? 

It scares Wilson, honestly: heaven, hell.

Utopia.

***

"You might be dying," House says, the usual consonant stressed unnecessarily, "but that doesn't mean that I have to like it." When House brings up the fact that their time is limited (it was always limited, but the limit was distant, moving so slowly that its movement was disguised cleverly as stillness), he always has this rough coarseness in his voice, overly calloused to compensate for that fact that it's incredibly real. Present.

House is clean, but unshaven - morning light stubbornly filters through the blinds on their motel room, cutting sharp lines across House's stubbled face from where he's standing. His cane is discarded carelessly on the other twin sized bed, where an assortment of porn magazines are splayed, almost as if to show off. 

 _I am not in love with you,_ they declare indignantly.

"I didn't want to wake up to this," Wilson groans, dragging a hand across his eyes to block out the warm light. He can smell the scent of chlorine wafting under the doorframe - that definitely isn't going to help his lungs. Wilson coughs dismissively and turns over, burying his head into his pillow, even though he's practically smothering himself.

"I wanted to wake up to naked hookers sitting in a hot tub with a bottle of oil-based lube in one hand and a bag full of cocaine in the other, but instead I woke up to you," House shoots back, but then, surprisingly, he doesn't say anything else. As if that was as far as he'd planned it before the scenario popped up in his head, as if the sounds of Wilson's voice had stirred an impenetrable silence out of him. House is almost breaching the quiet, his tongue set stubbornly on his teeth, formed to make an impenitent remark. He says nothing and closes his mouth in defeat. Wilson turns back over and feels bad about being secretly relieved, staring at House, his lips thin with puzzlement.

He lays there for a moment, his mind still hanging disconcertedly on House's last words. He then says "okay" as if it's a question, his brows upturned, and rolls on his side, away from House's gaze.

His breathing evens manually and although he knows that House knows that he's faking being asleep, that he's faking _everything,_ House collapses into the bed besides Wilson's and sighs exaggeratedly. "What should we do today," House says to an unmoving Wilson. "Heard that there's a fair nearby. Go-karts are fucking awesome."

Wilson doesn't speak because he's afraid of betraying himself. It's morning, and he can't be hanging onto every word of House's like they're a lifeline. Something stirs inside of Wilson when he hears House speak to him; he's gruff and biting, and it's exactly what Wilson wants and doesn't need. When House speaks, Wilson can feel himself wind, unwind and rewind, in an endless cycle of depravity and uncertainness. He knows that House doesn't have the modesty to repeat himself, to prompt Wilson to speak - so he waits a few moments while thinking up what to say. If he fills the silence with something more exciting, then perhaps the seconds before they spilled out of Wilson's mouth will be forgotten. House will not get the chance to analyze; he will have forgotten it, as if it were an unmemorable poem. 

All that escapes Wilson's mouth is a bleak, "I'm tired, House. Not today."

The softness in which House replies makes Wilson want to hit him, like you want to hit a child that has been crying incessantly all day. "You're always tired," he says, his eyes shifting to the small of Wilson's back, where his shirt has ridden up, where he can see two dimples depressing into the flesh of his spine. Wilson adjusts to accommodate, pulling his sweater closer to him, over the bare strip of skin.

"Yeah, well," he mutters bitterly, "that's usually what happens when you have three months to live." He can still sense House's gaze on him when he rolls groggily out of bed and into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He pays no attention to the curve of House's hips and how his sweatpants hang off of them, and the smooth, tanned skin that blankets his bare forearms. Wilson makes believe that House is not hungry for that stripe of skin that occasionally appears around the small of his back - the teasing notion hanging on a string. 

***

They exhaust their days sleeping and planning for the next days, faking busyness, House sneaking furtive glances at Wilson's shoulders and the breadth of his chest. Greg's eyelashes seem to have grown darker since Wilson was diagnosed, and his gait more heavy. It makes it easier for him to scrutinize Wilson, the lashes obscuring a clear view of what House is looking at; of what he's thinking. Wilson wants to split the moments they have together into smaller fractions so he can compose a picture of House where he doesn't have lashes to hide behind, where Wilson can be inside of his head and curl up there and be safe behind walls of despondency.

Wilson sometimes looks up at House, and can see moments held inside of his eyes, weighted and hard, like cold stones sinking densely into the bottom of a stream. House looks as if he is waiting patiently when his forehead works itself into the dip of a rosewood cane, a leg splayed out carelessly in front of him. Wilson pretends that he can't sense House's stare when he's dozing off in the night, drinking in moments; more moments to be held within the chasm of his pupils, blown out in the dark. Wilson wonders what he's waiting for, and if he's waiting at all.

Wilson desperately wishes that he was oblivious to House, but his emotions are a soft hum that is unnoticeable until it is brought into focus by an outside force. He can't unhear it. It pokes persistently at the tumorous tissue of his ribs, pushing at him in the dark.

House has tried not to over compensate, pacing himself and not pushing when it's time for Wilson to sleep. He ignores inquiries about Wilson's cancer, and refuses to talk about it - nothing's changed, really. They still speak with expressions, often tilting their heads to show agreement, uttering glib remarks at one another, not afraid to walk on eggshells. House acts like he's alright so that Wilson won't lose his nerve.

But then Wilson catches moments in his periphery. He's not even sure if he sees them; they're so faint and fleeting, but if he does then they're there. 

House is always surveying him. Gauging him. A look of fear is on his face, as if he's afraid that his best friend will drop dead any moment and leave him behind. 

Alone.

He feels bad for House, more than he feels bad for himself. Wilson understands (and although it's narcissistic, he understands) that he is all that House has. Once the five months are up, there'll be nothing left.

They both know it. They say it to each other in looks and tentative touches, when House is rubbing Wilson's back when he feels as if he's about to hack up his lungs. In those moments, he doesn't have enough headspace to think, "House loves me," but sometimes he doesn't have to think it. Sometimes it's just his touch on Wilson's back and a few gentle words swathed in sarcasm. He knows. They both know.

***

He wraps his waking moments in cellophane and hopes that when he throws those moments into the water, they won't sink like stones. But sometimes, he feels like his consciousness is being riddled with holes, and without warning all he can see is spots of darkness in his vision and the choking feeling of drowning in his own lungs. Maybe he deserves this. Maybe it's his fault.

He catches himself staring at House while he's sleeping, reciprocating the teasing notions. There is a list of them, and they're nothing more and nothing less than wishful thinking that Wilson indulges in when his mind is dark.

One of those teasing notions is that in this moment, right now, Wilson can card his fingers through the tufts of gray hair that are sticking up in all possible directions, shadowing the deep lines of House's face. He can crawl into bed, grumble, "Move over," and have House enclose him, encircle him, unaware that this is his best friend, and that he isn't worth encircling at all. One of those teasing notions goes like this:

_Wilson leans down and runs his thumb repeatedly over the pink flesh of House's lips. He doesn't pay attention to the expression of disturbance that House has when he wakes up; he freezes the moment, so that if House is touched this way, he won't look as if he minds. He pauses a moment, eyes darting between House's eyes and his mouth, wondering if he should actually do this. His thumb is still on the pink, sharp edge of his upper lip._

_Wiry hair grazes his thumb as he sweeps his hand to the curve of House's jaw, lifting his head upward so he can gently press his lips to House's._

_His mouth is soft and giving, compliant under the duress of Wilson's lips. The kiss feels more precise and surgical than anything, doctored and controlled, tentative. Wilson has a hypothesis: House will kiss him back, softly, although Wilson's afraid to press harder. His friend isn't responding, but it is just a notion, after all._

_Wilson unfreezes time, and to his surprise, House's hands are in his hair, and his mouth is open, his tongue pressing desperately into Wilson's. He worries his lip in between his teeth, an outlying hand cupping the curve of Wilson's ass and pulling him down on top. Short, hot breaths push into Wilson's mouth, and he's breathless, messy, yearning."I love you," he says, it's the first thing he says, he doesn't care, he doesn't - he stops touching House just so that he can see his face. You're loved; you're loved, he wants to say; he wants to kiss it into House's chest, spell it into the flesh of his legs, his atrophied thigh. House appears elated and beautiful, his lashes fluttering, his lips parted to receive an open-mouthed kiss._

_Slowly, Wilson leans into House, but doesn't connect for fear of never seeing him like this again. It takes a slight effort for House to kiss him, lifting his head from the pillow, pulling his shirt untucked. He touches the naked small of his back, slipping one hand aggressively into Wilson's boxers and pushing him down into his groin, where his hips are rutting evenly and slowly into Wilson's leg. Wilson can feel House's cock slotting against him, low, airy whines being gasped into Wilson's gaping mouth. Their lips collide coincidentally as House fucks himself on Wilson's thigh, grinding and becoming undone, and it's all that Wilson can do to step out of the fantasy and think:_ Is this worth it?

***

The word "utopia" originates in 1516, where an English Renaissance humanist named Thomas More coined the term as the title to his most famous, and, unsurprisingly, controversial book. The novel describes an imaginary island in the Atlantic which contains a perfect society. 

Utopia is a double entendre etymologizing from the Greeks. It means, "no such place." Its counterpart, "eutopia," coincidentally means "good place." They are pronounced the same, and although "eutopia" is obsolete, it has added a stigma to the word.

Utopia is fantastic. Utopia is also _absur_ _d_. Perfection is unattainable, in every aspect, and we have to settle for less; we just _have_ to. There is not one human on earth that is not touched by negativity, whether they are conscious of it or not.

There is no such place as utopia.

But if there were...

 _No,_ Wilson thinks. _There's no such place._

***

"Do you want to buy a hooker?" House looks up from his magazine as he speaks, a half-serious expression on his face. He's laying in bed, his bad leg propped up on a pillow. "I mean, it's not gay if it's a three-way."

Wilson scoffs and puts down the book he's been holding. (Not reading. Not really.) "No," he snorts, indignant. The very action of him exhaling so forcefully sends a sharp, shooting pain into his chest. When House replies, "Why not?" with a careless shrug, Wilson can't answer from the shock of feeling like his heart is being torched.

He's exhausted, honestly. House had planned today within an inch of its life. They rode their bikes to a nearby carnival, and they did all the things that carnival goers did, and it was taxing and horrible and they both agreed that they would never do anything like that again. (House said, "in the years to come," which really wasn't very fair of him.)

"Because, House," Wilson protests, propping himself up on his elbows. "One, it is gay if it's a three way, and two, I would rather get sex from real people."

"That's an insult to hookers."

"Yeah, well," Wilson grumbled distastefully. "I don't want to."

"Cross it off your bucket list. Hell, I'll even put it on me. It's on the house. Pun intended only slightly."

"House, we're using my money."

House rolls his eyes. "Buzzkill. I do have cash."

Wilson dismissively waves his hand and picks up his book, pretending to run his eyes down the pages but not reading anything at all. He's just waiting for House to speak up again, and when he does, it's no surprise. But what he says… it makes Wilson shake his head, like a dog trying to get water out of its ears.

"Why not buy a hooker? I'm serious," House says, his lips curled into an encouraging smile. "As serious as I'm ever going to get, that is." 

Why not? _Why not?_

Was House really going to ask him that, as if he didn't already know? Was he really going to make Wilson say it…? Because Wilson thought that's what they'd been trying to _avoid._ Because he thought that House knew - of course he knows, he does, they both know. Of course they know. House is fucking with him. He's trying to screw things up, just like he always does when it actually matters. House is just fucking it up because he can't stand being miserable alone, because he is like a parasite but Wilson is still letting him drain the life out of him, bit by bit - no _wonder_ he has cancer, it's House, it's him, and Wilson can't take it, he just can't-

"You fucking… _dick!"_ he yells at House, abruptly enough that House's smile is wiped off his face in an instant. Wilson feels like a tightly wound coil, ready to snap back or break, but determined to do neither. House shocked into silence, eyes wide and mouth closed, finally, for one goddamn time in his life. "You _know_ why," Wilson hisses lowly. "You know," and he can't keep the pathetic agony out of his voice. "House," he says, his voice cracking on the word, a finger being brought up to point accusatorially. He can feel his throat closing, and tears threatening to dampen his eyes. He doesn't know what to say, so he falls back to default, his voice trembling.

"House. You… _know_ why."

Wilson looks down, because he can't take it. He can't fucking take it.

They don't share a word for the rest of the night.

***

He dreams of dying.

At two, he wakes with a start, panting uncontrollably. He feels like his lungs aren't getting enough air, yet he's making so much carbon dioxide. He needs to exhale into a bag, and concentrate hard on breathing - _Where's House? - Don't pay attention to him, James -_ in out, in out, in out, but he's starting to forget what the words mean and he's confusing them - in out, in in out out out, out, out, in in in in in in out in out-

 _You need House to live,_ he hears, as he passes out. _You need House to die. Pathetic._

***

Everyone used to call him James, and then House came, and he erased James's existence and replaced it so seamlessly with a stranger - the stranger that James had wanted to be. No one noticed except them. It was their secret.

But that stranger has cancer, and just hyperventilated his way into sleep.

When he wakes up, it's three AM, and he regrets everything. Even if only for a second, a notion hangs there, a sentiment that he previously thought he'd only have if his family was threatened at gunpoint.

 _Fuck it,_ Wilson thinks. _There is no utopia. Fuck it to hell._

_He downs twenty of House's Vicodin. It saves him the pain of dying slowly._

_He calls it an experiment. Sees if he wakes up in the morning. Wilson drifts away, feeling small and insignificant, his hand loosening on the pill bottle until it falls from his grip and onto the floor. Pills disperse in a warped clatter, like glass beads._

_For an instant, he feels no pain._

_And what will House do then, when he finds his friend lying on the bathroom floor?_

_What will he do then?_

***

But Wilson'll never leave House like that.

***

_"If you need to talk, if you need any more help..."_

_"I'm just tired."_

_"...I'm right here."_

He was so used to being the crutch, the shoulder. Now look where they are.

***

There are lines they do not cross.

When Wilson calms down, House faces him, gauging his response. He slips out of his bed and limps around, over to Wilson, unsure of what to do next, what moves to make. This is a dance to him. A chess game. They're a pair of broken marionettes. "Hey," he says, his voice thick with that uncertainty he gets when he's being half-decent. He doesn't look Wilson in the eyes. "You okay?"

Wilson nods shakily, wiping his palms on his pajamas. He shuns the faint tint of fear from his mind as he nods again, and House sits down on the bed next to him, lifting his bad leg up with both thick hands. They sit for a few seconds in the darkness, and he doesn't know what to say, so he just starts talking.

"I'm sorry," he starts, uncharacteristically. "I didn't know - I mean, I knew. We both knew. We both did and I thought that if I pretended that it wasn't true then when you died I wouldn't feel so..."

 _In a different, kinder world, House doesn't finish his sentence._ _Wilson sits up and pulls House down on top of him, one hand on his hip, the other palming the skin on his face; he hears the soft intake of breath that House makes when he does so. They lean into the mattress, and it groans under the weight of them,_ them _. House and Wilson. Is this a line they can cross?_

_His skin feels like rain, and his lips are like a pulse; he can feel soft, wiry hairs brush against his hand, and as he leans back into the mattress, House says in a low, breathy whisper: "Is the part where I kiss you?" And he takes in Wilson's face with his eyes and he chuckles and he presses his lips to Wilson's like he is a planet caught in Wilson's gravity._

_House trails open mouthed kisses down from the corner of Wilson's mouth to his neck, quiet hums of appreciation being attached onto every touch of skin. Wilson squirms slightly as he feels House's hands tighten on the hem of his shirt, lifting it up over his head and discarding it carelessly on the floor besides them. Kisses are trailed down the skin of his chest, House mouthing the flesh quivering underneath him, and House disregards the protest of his leg as he slowly makes his way down to Wilson's hips, smoothing his fingertips across the skin of his ribcage and the soft warmth of his stomach. House looks enraptured as he watches the slow undulations underneath him, rubbing a warm hand against Wilson's hardness as Wilson exhales, shaken._

_When House comes back up to kiss him, still palming Wilson leisurely, Wilson draws his fingers through the wisps at the base of House's neck and breathes him in. In a different, kinder world, he falls in love like that. Again and again and again, he falls in love, the way you fall in love with a song, or a sunset._

In a different, kinder world, House doesn't finish his sentence. _Wilson kisses him._

In a different, kinder world, Wilson doesn't have cancer. _Wilson kisses him._

In a different, kinder world, James doesn't feel like he's about to spontaneously combust because House _knows,_ they both _know,_ and there's no point in apologizing for knowing because you can't just snap your fingers and undo processes and diagnoses; there are steps to go in reverse. Wilson sometimes feels like he is Sisyphus, pushing a boulder to the top of a hill and then watching it roll back down again, successfully banning emotion from his consciousness and then watching it break back through with the persistence of a wrecking ball. He can't control the laws of inertia.

Thusly, House's sentence carries through with the same speed and in the same direction, unacted upon by an outside force. Silence hangs over them, a cloud that refuses to play its hand, shuffling coyly and waiting for a tell. Wilson can sense sleet in the way that House breathes - precisely, measured. He sits up, and says, "We don't need to talk about it, House." His voice is a whisper, although the neighbors won't really be able to hear if he speaks louder. Then again, it is four thirty.

House nods, once, his eyes meeting Wilson's. "Right," he says, his voice feigning certainty. "See you in the morning." House stands up slowly, looking down at Wilson. His eyes are taking in Wilson's face, gray shadows under the deep lines of his brow. They seem to express exactly what House is feeling at any one time - but not now. This time his face is drawn and quiet with knowledge, secret thoughts that aren't grievous nor happy. House looks blank, but Wilson knows better.

If only he could curl up inside of House's skull and know exactly what he's thinking, feel the way he feels, experience every smell and texture and ache that rattles through his bones. He could fix things; small things; tweak and work at broken cogs and IV drips linking his heart to his brain. Wilson could finally lay things out, like a map before him, tracing which paths lead to this moment, and understand all their mistakes, the wrong turns they took.

Wilson fights the urge to ask if he feels the same way, because their walls are up for a reason, and he's not going to touch him, because the spaces in between skin are there to separate people. Wilson won't climb into his arms and bury himself in House's chest and curl up inside his head, and understand everything wrong that has ever happened to them.

There are lines.

***

_Wilson dreams his eyes are blue stars in an expanse of soundless space, and his fingers are comets, tails trailing across the stretch of the skies. House drags a meteor across the expanse of Wilson's chest, and Wilson pushes through galaxies and interdimensional black holes just to kiss him._

***

There is a stark difference between undoing the past and being given more time. Wilson often wonders which would be more valuable.

If they undid the past, there would be a possibility that they wouldn't lead out the same lives as they did the time before, and their existences would diverge into different timelines, creating different universes. Of course, that's just a concept.

Then again, House could have looked at Wilson at the convention and he could have decided that he'd marry him. House doesn't believe in love at first sight, but this is a notion and notions are fragments of truth spun into a lie to make them more palatable. _(Could Wilson marry House in any universe? Are those just believable rationalizations?)_ House could have decided, at any point before this moment, to tell Wilson in certain terms that "yes, this isn't just a notion," or "no, put your boy toy back in your pants, 'cause I don't want to play with it."

If they undid the past, that doesn't necessarily mean it'd undo their future. Wilson could still be dying. In fact, in terms of balance of probability, if it's happening now, it probably happened in a different lifetime, too. Cancer usually has variables, but Wilson just _got it,_ like you catch a cold or how you fall in love. Suddenly, by surprise. He could still be dying, except without House. He could be dying in a hospital with harsh blue lights shining down eerily upon the sickly pale of his hands, with his family sitting next to him, arms folded unreassuringly across their laps.

House could have been a bad breakup, or an annoying guy he met once at this _thing,_ or he could have been Cuddy's husband, holding Rachel in his arms and making Wilson babysit with no compensation. He could have been Wilson's barber, nicking his neck on purpose, or Wilson's _"here and now."_

They could have never crossed paths, and Wilson could have been someone else's consolation prize.

But they also could have been perfect.

_Wilson comes up behind House and wraps his arms around his shoulders, commenting on a large painting on the wall adjacent to them. "I like it," Wilson states matter-of-factly, his lips forming a grimace._

_House is sitting on a stool, looking rather discontented about the whole ordeal. He's staring at the landscape painting with an air of extreme pretension, half-demanding, "Why the fuck did you buy this thing? We're not an old couple, for God's sake." House hooks his palms across the arms that are draped over him and leans back into Wilson, whose expression is subtly sour._

_Wilson says, "We bought it because we agreed that we'd buy it, House. You see that?" Wilson points with three fingers to the horizon of the artwork, running his hand smoothly in the air to illustrate the line where the sky meets the earth._

_"What," House replies, scoffing, "the painting?"_

_"No," Wilson clarifies. "The focal point. Do you see the perspective? It's an illusion."_

But perfection is for utopias and for Gods and places that don't exist in this facet of reality. Wilson sometimes looks up at House and he can see perfect moments inside of his eyes, blown up wide, yet out of focus. Wilson doesn't know what to say to House when things like that happen, so he just brings him out of his stupor with a temperate tone of voice, reminding him of their schedule and how they should hurry up so they don't miss the next train to Tallahassee.

_"I don't want to get worked up over a few colors, okay? Forgive me. I don't jack off to Norman Rockwell in my spare time." He's still fixated over the painting on their wall, trying to figure out why it seems like he could step into it, if he only tried. "Why'd you buy this garbage," he reiterates, quieter._

_"I_ like _it," Wilson enthuses back._

 _"Bullshit,_ _" House chuckles. "You hate this painting. You only bought it because Bonnie made you feel bad about taking it for free, even though she didn't like it either; I mean, Wilson. It's as ugly as my tranny aunt Jackie." Wilson's face registers as he rolls his eyes, and House pauses, then adds, "Thank god you broke up with her before you could end up married. Imagine sharing everything with her."_

 _"She hogged the blankets," Wilson agrees, nodding sensibly. "You're right, House, absolutely right. I, James Wilson, am incapable of enjoying something without having an ulterior motive." He says it as he waves his right hand to gesture to the accompanying space, faking sincerity. "The only reason I bought this was to appease my jealous ex-girlfriend. Personal satisfaction is a sham, people don't change, and God isn't real. How did I_ ever _doubt you?"_

_"Appeasing your ex-girlfriend isn't completely unheard of, y'know."_

_Wilson leans down to kiss behind House's ear. Tufts of curly brown hair brush his nose as he does so, and he tangles his hands with House's. "You hate it," House murmurs affectionately, squeezing his palms. "I know you do. You don't have to lie to me. No one's here."_

There's nothing more painful than imagining a younger House lacing their fingers, or pressing kisses to his cheeks on Sunday afternoons. Wilson could have diagnosed an infarction before it ended with his leg being half amputated, or he could have protected House as a proxy. There are versions of reality where they aren't gods, but they're happy. _(House runs across the lawn to stop the neighbor from cutting the branches hanging over their property. House uses his legs to lift Wilson up and press his back gently into the wall. House goes jogging at 3 AM because he can't fucking think, not with their dog from hell barking incessantly. House solves a case and runs to the OR to stop a procedure. House doesn't use drugs. House isn't in pain. House isn't bitter. House doesn't hate the world. House loves-)_ There's nothing more painful than _thinking_ that, _believing_ that; beyond this life there might've been a utopia where everything was different. If Wilson could undo time with the press of a button, would he?

Would he risk losing everything if there was a chance that they'd be able to be happy together? Even if only for a decade? Less? Eventually, they would have to give it up.

_"I like it," Wilson says into House's nape, thin hairs brushing against his lips. "You like it, too. You're just a real bastard."_

_"'M not. I mean, I'm a complete bastard, but-"_

_"Don't you have work today, House?"_

_House's face falls flat for a second as he thinks, and suddenly he shoots up from his seat, sprinting to his closet and grabbing a suit jacket to throw on over his tee. "I'm an hour late," he explains quickly, his voice growing louder as he jogs into their bedroom , "and usually I wouldn't care, but Cuddy'll make me do double clinic duty if I forget what day it is again and don't come into work-"_

_"Yeah, yeah," Wilson says. He gestures to the kitchen: "Lunch is in the fridge."_

_"You made me lunch but didn't tell me I had work today?" House yells from across the hall, running into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He pokes his head out from the door with a toothbrush in hand, looking mischievous, his voice farcical. "You are such a naughty boy, Wilson."_

_"Brush your teeth!" Wilson yells to him, laughter in his voice. "And if you're going to shave, clean the hairs from the sink. It's disgusting."_

_House jogs out of the bathroom, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. "Or what?" he says, kissing Wilson quickly on the cheek. Wilson ducks his head and grins as House gives him a quick slap on the ass, squeezing for good measure. "It's cute when you try to be dominant," House says with a smirk, walking to the door and opening it._

_"Stay out of trouble," Wilson yells after him, "and don't assault anyone!"_

_"But that's the fun part!" House whines. He closes the door, and he leaves the notion, and Wilson is left standing there with his palms pressing into the couch, knowing that this isn't real. None of this is real._ The scenery changes. He is alone.

If they were granted more time - if Wilson's cancer was suddenly eradicated and they decided to fly to Spain under an alias and spend the rest of their days drinking martinis and scuba diving in the Mediterranean - would anything have been different?

House once said, "Almost dying changes nothing. Dying changes everything." Wilson is inclined to believe that House is wrong about some things; he's mortal, they both are, and mortal people have ideologies that are wrong and disprovable.

If House is right, they'll buy dutch prostitutes and drink intolerably, the pain in House's leg dulled by the constant assault of dopamine on his senses. He'd do what he always does - he'd behave like an arrogant, immature son of a bitch and then expect people to wait on him hand and foot. Wilson would watch as their lives slowly disassembled and assuaged the pains and realities of life. They would still die, someday. They weren't _young._ For thirty years, they'd both live meaninglessly and pretend to enjoy parodic versions of their old lives. They'd hate themselves as they pretended to be free, and at night they'd turn off all the lights and smoke their guilt away. _(Cigar butts glow red as embers fall away and onto the floor. They taste burnt paper and nicotine as they leisurely puff away, glasses of champagne sitting meagerly on the coffee table_ _; toasting to each other without so much as moving. Their chests are in sync, like moon phases.)_

If Wilson is right, and probability says he is (after all, if House is right about _almost_ everything, there has to be a margin for error), and if his cancer somehow disappeared one day, he'd kiss House. They'd move to Italy.

Wilson loves Italy. When he was a kid, his parents visited his great-aunt there during the summer, and they stayed in a guest house on her premises. He used to climb this tree in their backyard, and sit up there until it was dark and the soft lamps outside her doorstep were surrounded by moths and flies and mosquitoes. He watched stars flicker like ancient flames in the blue black sky, breathing in cool air and forgetting about every trouble in the world.

His great-aunt taught him how to cook; in turn, he taught her how to foxtrot. She died shortly after that.

_"Pass the prosciutto," Wilson says, holding out a hand without looking away from the gourmet pizza before him. It smells wonderful, although it hasn't been baked; olives, spinach, diced tomatoes, onions, mushrooms... he ran out unwillingly earlier that day to buy groceries so they could make one pizza, but it evidently was for naught._

_"No one likes prosciutto. Use, I dunno,_ bacon."

_"And here I was," Wilson muses, "thinking you could actually cook."_

_"I_ can _cook," House responds, "which is why I'm telling you to use bacon." He pushes himself off the counter and into Wilson's arm, bumping his hand and causing it to release the ingredients. Wilson yelps as he accidentally puts too much black pepper into one spot, jumping back and knocking House aside._

 _Defiantly,_ _ _he__ __puts__ _his hands on his hips after wiping them on his apron, and says, "Well, next time, warn me before I spend three hours making us homemade pizza. I'll make sure to fit your immaturity into my schedule."_

 _"It's just_ pork!"

_"My pork."_

_House smirks slightly, using his cane to turn back towards Wilson. "Your pork indeed." He lands a chaste kiss on the back of his neck before resting his chin on Wilson's shoulder. "Bacon," he insists._

_"We didn't move to Italy because of the scenery."_

_"Did we move because of the delicious meatballs?"_

_"The culture, House," Wilson explains patiently. "It's wonderful. I wanted to be here before I died, and now I'm not dying, so we're here. And 'bacon' is not an authentic italian dish."_

_"Says who?" House mutters, planting his lips on the side of Wilson's neck again. His hands come around his waist as Wilson continues to add spices and toppings, barraged by tiny kisses, ignoring them with all of his will._ _He fails to fight a smile and instead makes a twisted grimace as House continues to drag his lips gently across the back of Wilson's neck._

_"Says I, House," Wilson replies firmly, his head involuntarily leaning back into House's mouth. "Kissing me," he mutters stubbornly, reaching over to the pork, "will not stop this prosciutto."_

_"You're no fun_ _," House says as he continues._

_Wilson takes up the pizza in his arms and turns around to offer it to House, interrupting their session. "Oven?"_

_House lifts up his cane and fakes a grimace. "I'm a cripple," he sighs._ _"My only cure is bacon and great sex."_

_"Not only are you a cripple, but you're five years old, too," Wilson objects, making his way over to the oven. "And," he adds, "you can't cook."_

_"I can't see through the bitter haze of my tears," House replies, frowning, "please, have mercy."_

_Mercy,_ Wilson muses. _What a trite banality for dying men._

 _Whatever you're doing to yourself,_ he thinks, _isn't_ _merciful._

***

There's no use in daydreams. You can't make up symptoms, even if it's hard and you don't have much time left. _("_ _ _There's something we haven't found yet," House says. "Everybody lies. The only variable is about what."__ _)_

What had they lied about? What was stopping them from making this easy?

***

"Let's go to Italy," Wilson whispers one night in the dark.

Wilson hears the soft straining of fabric as House props himself up onto his elbows. He can almost feel the twist of House's brows across the chasm between them, and suddenly he's more aware of the air that is keeping them apart. (He wishes that they were molecules that would find each other eventually.) House says, "Why?" as if the word is a glass in his mouth that may break.

There's a hollow ache where his heart is supposed to be as Wilson closes his eyes and forces the words out: "I want to... die..." he speaks the word like it's some profoundly painful truth, "in Italy."

House makes some unbelieving scoff, a cynical smile teasing his lips. "Italy? Why? Is it the delicious meatballs?"

 _"No,"_ Wilson says sullenly, "...no."

"You sure? You've only got... you know," he replies. "If we go, those are days we can't get back."

Wilson nods an answer, rolling over to look at House. If House is unnerved by this, he doesn't say anything. All he does is stare back, his fingers white and blotched on the blankets, as though he's fighting the urge to up and go.

Finally, after thirty or so seconds, Wilson says, "It's beautiful around this time of year-" but something catches in his throat and he begins coughing, sitting up clumsily and hacking unpleasantly into the bed. He tries to say that he's sorry in between bouts of coughing, looking positively ashamed that this is happening in the middle of a sentence. House knows that Wilson doesn't like getting help when he's awake, but Wilson starts coughing so hard that House is sure that he's going to go into respiratory arrest. He makes his way from his bed to Wilson's and begins to rub hard circles into his back.

"You should be giving me massages," he says over the coarse sound of Wilson's coughing. "I feel this bad every day."

Wilson's coughing begins to die down, and he whispers, "Don't... make... me laugh," through each expulsion of air. He keeps on watching House, because if he looks away then House will look sad when Wilson turns his back. "It's beautiful," Wilson rasps. "It's beautiful around now."

"Alright," House replies softly, making half a nod. "Alright. We'll go to Italy."

***

He's got two months.

Death sits at his doorstep, now. Waiting.

***

When House is in the next room making them a dish that Wilson definitely won't eat, Wilson buys plane tickets to the Amalfi Coast. He buys a round trip in House's name, and a one way in his.

Just in case.

***

The day of, Wilson gets really sick. 

They don't know if it's just anxiety or if his cancer is getting worse or if he just had a bad night, but when they wake up at around noontime and House is rushing Wilson about to make sure that they catch the flight to Italy, Wilson starts not being able to breathe.

Wilson once had the wind knocked out of him when he was eight. He was climbing the monkey bars when he slipped and fell flat on his back. He hit his head, and when he was finally able to differentiate the pain from the astounding sensation of not having any air in his lungs, he began crying soundless tears, trying to wail but not being able to. His mother called the police; worried that he was dying from anaphylaxis. It was not until she stabbed an epi-pen into his thigh muscle that she realized that her son had simply had a diaphragmatic spasm. The police weren't so sure - they questioned him for thirty minutes after he'd recovered his breath, and his mother scolded him half-heartedly afterwards. Said something like: "Jim, never again, never again, you scared me, you did."

Now, it is nothing like that. He is filling his lungs with air, but he's asphyxiating - House has to pull out the oxygen from the corner of the room and give the cannula to Wilson to insert.

"We've gotta make it," House says gruffly to a panting Wilson, "you gotta suck it up and get on the plane. Not gonna let you die here," he mumbles under his breath, as if it's a personal assault on his character. "I'm an asshole, but let it never be known that I was a sissy," House would say later.

"House..." Wilson gasps, "help... over there, there's... a toothbrush. Toothpaste." He breathes a bit more, sitting up straighter, but still not able to catch his breath. House limps his way quickly over to the suitcase that they're packing, stuffing the only clothes they have in and zipping it up with inexcusable zeal.

"We're going to be late, Wilson." He stops for a moment, and turns to look at him. "You good?"

"No..."

"Too bad. Get up, we're out of here."

Wilson discards the cannula and stuffs it into his suitcase, deeply breathing to staunch the additional shakiness and nausea passing over him. He wipes dampness from his brow and gathers himself, checking House over once before ushering him out the door.

Customs takes forever. By then, Wilson's stopped feeling short of breath, but he still has an upset stomach. He holds it together by clenching his abdominal muscles, praying aimlessly, and he reaches out to House when they're getting things checked at the desk. He realizes that he's trying to hold House's hand when House looks down at his palm and gives him a questioning look, scoffing at the lady running their passports. "This one's _so_ needy in the bedroom. Can't satiate," he jokes mockingly, and the woman gives him a perfunctory, meaningless smile before sending them on their way to the flight gates.

They walk in silence until Wilson interrupts them both, turning to block House from walking, hands resting on his hips. "I was just nervous that you wouldn't check out, House," Wilson says. "You're dead, remember?"

House makes a point of looking down at his own body, "making sure." He smirks a bit before sniping, "You obviously didn't remember. Practically groped at my hand to make sure. Third base? That's gotta be third."

"Yes," Wilson grumbles as House pushes his way past them both. "Mock, deflect. You should make it into an acronym," he continues, beginning to walk after House again.

"MD. Like, Gregory House, M.D."

"Brilliant _and_ comedic. God, it's _literally_ Christmas in July."

"Don't be so _loathing,"_ House says, limping onto the plane.

It's small, with a haphazard blue carpet stained with god knows what, and when House walks down the aisle in front of him, his hair brushes the ceiling. It's making Wilson claustrophobic, almost - the carpeting, the coffee stained seats, the cashews littering the floors... and suddenly, Wilson starts to feel light-headed. He follows after House, pressing his fingers to his temple and sucking in air. He hates how he's slowing down to compensate, trying not to let other people see how fucking exhausted he is. It feels like his chest is going to implode into a crunched, meaty mass, and he's going to die right here.

House looks at him once he's reached their seats, and he cocks his head, as if almost confused by this display of vulnerability. "You okay?" he shouts across the aisle, making his way back to Wilson, who is leaning on a blonde lady's chair.

"Aye," she says, obviously peeved, "if you're gonna get sick, bruh, don't get on a plane."

House gives her a glare befit for murderers. "He has cancer, you insensitive horse shit," House barks at her, putting a hand to Wilson's back and helping him along to his seat. For a second, Wilson can only feel House's palm on the small of his back, gently easing him forward into the next seats. It's warm, and firm, and unshaking, supporting Wilson as he shudders from nausea, cold sweats soaking through his T-shirt. House situates him, putting two fingers to his wrist and counting beats.

"Your BPM is out of control," he whispers in Wilson's ear. House's lips graze his hair, and if he wasn't shuddering enough now... House upturns and looks for a stewardess, locking his eyes on one after a few seconds. "Hey!" he shouts obnoxiously to a flight attendant. "Lady! We need you to pull out an oxygen mask for my friend, here-"

"We're not even off the ground, sir, you're going to have to wait," she replies firmly as she walks over to them.

"I'm a doctor," he says, still holding Wilson upright. Wilson takes the liberty to slip out of House's warm grip and collapse into a chair, panting for breath. "He's an oncologist. He has a thymoma. Give him oxygen. _Now_."

Wilson hears conversation dimly through his exhaustion, seeing stars and panting for oxygen. He needs _more_ of it. One more minute like this and he'll pass out from a lack thereof and then they'll have to stop the flight... it won't be on time... Italy... he'll die here, on this plane, in America. _You're not gonna die here,_ Wilson tells himself, _you're being melodramatic._

He zones out from the bickering until House snaps him back in with a loud shout: "I don't care if this flight has to grow a hull and sails and has to swim all the way to Italy-"

Wilson faintly feels people staring at them, murmuring disquietedly about the state of affairs. "Why won't he shut up?" Wilson hears someone say off to the side. The stewardess argues that the oxygen masks don't work until the plane is in the air, which makes House triply more angry.

"Just do it, for God's sake!"

"Sir-"

"He's going to go into respiratory arrest!"

"You're not helping him, sir!" she yells back, finally losing her patience.

"Yeah, moron, unless I can conjure a spare stash of O2 out of thin air, I can't. And guess who can? Y-"

Wilson saves a passing breath of air to cough out, _"House,"_ rather weakly, grabbing onto his forearm and pulling him down. "Leave it," Wilson wheezes, looking up at the windswept stewardess. She looks much too tired to be doing this, now, with sinking eye bags unable to be hidden by her concealer, and ratty hair. She nods at him thankfully, walking over to the microphone to announce that they are now lifting off.

A minute or two later, she unlocks a compartment above Wilson's head and gives him an oxygen mask, smiling curtly at them both. House helps him slip it on as he glares at her leaving form, tight lines carved into his features. "That was stupid," he mumbles at Wilson after she's gone. Beneath the mask, Wilson blinks blearily at him, putting a hand to his arm and finally closing his eyes.

"D'you feel okay?"

Wilson lifts up the oxygen mask and wheezes, "I feel awful. And my stomach... it's killing me." The oxygen mask returns to his face and he curdles in pain, his chest aching and his stomach churning with acid.

"Yeah, well. You're gonna have to wait."

"No," Wilson gasps, arching his back in sudden excruciating pain. He rips off his oxygen mask and wheezes, "I'm going to vomit," which House responds to accordingly.

"Hey! Stewardess, someone's gonna hurl back here!" he shouts, passengers turning to stare at him.

A much prettier stewardess springs from the cabin, holding a bucket, which she gives to Wilson the second before the back of his esophagus is burning with stomach fluids and his undigested breakfast has come out of his mouth. He starts coughing while he's vomiting, if that's at all possible, and it comes out in short spurts of yellow goop.

"Wilson," House whispers softly, and Wilson has hardly a moment to look up before he vomits more, beginning to retch but not getting anything out. It's one of those moments, uncovered, where he looks up at House and he's scared for Wilson. His periphery is full of spots and harsh darkness and the look House is giving, as if he wants confirmation that Wilson's okay.

Wilson dry heaves for ten more minutes. He's not okay.

***

_"The operation is in two hours, and I'd like you to be there with me."_

_"No."_

_"What...? Why?"_

_"Because if you die, I'm alone."_

_Two hours later, when Wilson is closing his eyes, House is there._

***

Broken and butchered and falling apart at the seams, that's what Wilson is. All plane ride, he wants to lace his fingers with House's and sit curled in his lap, not entirely sure of why but completely sure of who. He stares at House when he pretends to fall asleep. He stares and stares and stares, and it's only when House actually does fall asleep that he takes House's limp hand and looks at it closely, running his thumb into the dip, the concave depression of his palm.

House's head is tilted back, and his lips are open, and his lashes are fluttering like narcoleptic butterflies, sleepless angels. He looks exhausted, with the lines of his face deep and cavernous, dark, a canyon cutting its way through his brows.

Wilson wonders if House is in the kind of pain that he is. If he spends every waking minute fantasizing, notions thrumming patterns through his mind, diagnoses being made and thrown away, trampled upon in the wake of their inconceivability. (It's never Lupus, _House thinks.)_

His hands are soft as Wilson puts two fingers to House's wrist, a pulse thrumming slightly into Wilson's index finger. It reminds him how still his will be in a few months, and the thought makes him want to tie House to him, tether him to this life. He knows that technically, House is dead already - in multiple ways - and that tying him down, brain stem or any other parts, won't keep his pulse going.

There's the musk of cheap alcohol and sweat coming off of him in sharp waves, blue shirt unironed on his chest, as if he didn't care enough to take a bath before they left. Wilson doesn't mind; he finally leans back onto the seat and closes his eyes. He pretends to fall asleep on House's shoulder.

***

_Wilson is roused awake in the middle of the night with a still figure next to him, breathing quietly, blue eyes wide open. He turns slightly to face him, running his eyes over his features, which are hard and chiseled and worn with past grievances. "Hey," Wilson says, softly , still half unconscious._

_"Couldn't sleep," House murmurs, his eyes slowly shifting to find the soft line of Wilson's face, inches away._

_"Nightmares?"_

_"What?" House says indignantly, looking away, "No." He puts a hand to his forehead, rubbing the crease in between his eyebrows and exhaling forcefully. "Just" - he inhales - "my leg hurts."_

_Wilson gazes at him for a silent second, finally slipping a palm down to House's right thigh. House winces in pain, his expression slowly easing into mild discomfort as Wilson works the knotted muscle out and inches towards his chest. House pulls him in closer, wrapping an arm around a bare strip of flesh from under Wilson's sweater, and bringing his leg across House's calves. Fingertips run through Wilson's locks evenly, ever so often tracing a line from his cheekbone to his hairline. "You okay?" Wilson breathes blearily into House's chest, readjusting so his head is resting in the crook of House's neck._

_"Fine. Go back to bed, Wilson ."_

_"Mmm," Wilson exhales, hardly cognizant, "Love you."_

_"Yeah," is all House replies._

 

***

They get to the place they rented out at eleven PM. If Wilson looks in between two houses in front of him, he can see the sea, scintillating in the moonlight. The night is quiet; the only sounds resonating through their seaside home are the sounds of the ocean, gentle yet evergreen. Wilson half expects the low noise to die out into a state of quiescence when his head falls to the pillow.

But it doesn't. Another sound trickles its way in, compounding upon the rush of water. It's only noticeable because Wilson had been listening, waiting for the sea to evaporate into stillness. But he hears it, quietly, and it sounds like...

He could have sworn - House was upstairs, with him, he watched him go up the stairs - did he? - Wilson stays absolutely still for a minute or two, confirming the noise, and then he suddenly sits straight up in bed, the blood coarsing through and outwards. Dizzy, he stumbles out of his bed, trying to stay as mute as possible. He pads down the stairs, and then he stands there, in their living room...

"House?" Wilson says, unsure.

His best friend is sitting on a couch, leaned forward, working his forehead into his cane. His leg is splayed out to the right of him, and soft sniffs are stifled as he uses the sleeve of his arm to wipe his nose, still not being loud enough to let anything on. Moonlight is casting cool blue shadows across his face, the stubble dark and rough and apparent.

Wilson readjusts to this for a second before putting out a placatory hand and trying to reason with everything. "House..." he starts gently, stuck on the wrong words, "I know that things have been... _hard_ today, but-"

"God," House snaps coarsely. His voice sounds clogged and harsh, like his nose's been plugged up. "You're fucking _dead,_ and you still wanna righteous me."

 

 

Wilson's brow creases in the darkness, and he steps back unknowingly. "Yeah," he says. "Because I care. You... matter. To me. You do. And... yeah. Yeah, I want to righteous you, even though I'm practically dead, because you matter to me, and..." Wilson inhales sharply, keeping his voice steady only by force of will. "You push everyone and everything away so you don't have to deal with things like these-"

"Would you just shut up, Wilson?" House interrupts angrily, wincing from pain. "Honestly. You're cutting my life expectancy."

"I get it, okay?" Wilson replies, louder. "Amber died, I was devastated, but I got over it. You'll get over it. You're House, you're - you're stoic, impassive, apathetic-"

"And _you're not Amber,"_ House manages to say without his voice breaking. "Do you get it? Or do I have to say it in a way that'll make it easier for you to understand?"

"Why do you always do this? Why... do you _always..._ deflect?"

"How am I fucking deflecting? You think my dad touched me as a little boy, so I'm not reacting the way you want me to to your death? Is there an arbitrary set of rules to dictate how I should _react to you?"_

"Maybe that's it!" Wilson yells, "I don't know!" He paces forward, waving his right hand around in House's face to illustrate his anger. "But I do know that you're hurting. I _know_ that, and there's no use in hiding it because I'm hurting, too. And you do this with everything. _Everything._ You crashed through Cuddy's wall because you couldn't _bear_ to confront your own emotions without being destructive. You violated your parole because you couldn't handle acting like a sane adult while your best friend was _dying._ You called my girlfriend at midnight because you got too buzzed to realize..." Wilson's voice gives out, and he places his right hand on his hip, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his left. "You're a shitty friend, House," Wilson breathes, his voice shaking. "You're a shitty friend, and I can't let you go."

House is stark silent. He looks up, cold moonlight cutting sharp edges across his features, and Wilson looks inside his ice blue eyes and there are no perfect moments. They're bloodshot, moisture painted onto the tan of his cheeks, gleaming and pinkened with a sort of ravenous grievance that Wilson's only seen a handful of times. There are no perfect moments; life is dirty and messy and honestly if Wilson could erase moments like these, he would. House's pupils are blown wide and cavernous, no longer holding scenarios and contemplations, but now emotions that are cool blue, airtight. Wilson can feel it in his hands, palpitating steadily, sucking oxygen out of his capillaries, out of the _room_ _;_ he can't breathe like this. He knows it'll hurt more if he lets on, but, God, he wants to - he could lean in - just steal a second's worth of House's lips to keep with him. In his back pocket, at all times.

 _There's no such place as utopia,_ Wilson has to remind himself. "How could you pretend you don't care?" Wilson says, hurt inflected into his voice. "Because you're uncomfortable with misery? House... misery is built into you. I'd say you were depressed, but it's much more simple than that" - Wilson chuckles bitterly, moreso because of the pain of it than from the pleasure - "and much more self inflicted."

House doesn't look away as he hisses, "You think I wanna be miserable? You think I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, 'How can I possibly fuck up my life even more?' "

"Sometimes, I think that's the only explanation."

"Well, you're a fucking idiot. _And_ you're wrong."

"Is that why you're crying downstairs, so I can't hear?" Wilson asks, his voice quietly incredulous, a pitiful scoff hidden in his tone.

"I'm doing that so I don't have to listen to you analyze me!" House shouts, "I'm doing it so you won't make me face the reality of the situation!"

"Don't be so _self absorbed,"_ Wilson yells, gesticulating. "You aren't the one _dying,_ you aren't the one in _pain-"_

"You know _nothing_ about pain!" House roars, "You don't know what it feels like to have _everything_ taken away from you because of a blood clot. You don't know how it feels to watch people in your life abandon you-"

"Because they got tired of dealing with your _crap,_ House," Wilson says, shaking. House stands up from his couch and advances on Wilson, his eyes even glassier than before, hand tight around his cane. "You say it's because of your leg. The truth is: you're a rude, apathetic human being who can't handle having real relationships. You _pushed_ those people out of your life. They didn't abandon you. I'm the only person you haven't lost yet, and now you're losing me, too, and you're _afraid_."

"Everybody dies!"

"Admit it!"

"No!"

"Admit it! You're afraid of losing me, because when I die, nothing else will matter, and you might as well be dead yourself!"

"Yeah, you're the only thing stopping me from tying myself down to some train tracks. Nice fucking deduction, Wilson."

"You cover everything truthful with sarcasm, you make everything with real emotion into a farce, you turn happiness and sadness into travesties to amuse you - you enjoy being miserable, being able to make others miserable - you're pathetic. Pathetic, House."

"No, Wilson," House says, more hushed, his voice suddenly taking on a different air. "You're hopelessly in love with realities that have no chance of happening. That's why we're in Italy. You want to live out the rest of your life like some goddamn fairytale, even though you know that it doesn't even matter. Your life wasn't worthwhile. Your life meant _nothing._ There is _nothing_ after this, and when you're dead, no one will care except me, Wilson."

House shakes his head, looking away for half a second before meeting Wilson's tortured gaze with a look so harsh and calloused that it makes Wilson take a step back. "You want to change reality," House says coldly. _"_ _ _That's__ pathetic."

***

_In a different, kinder world..._

No. There's no such place.

***

 

They spend the day after arranging and rearranging meticulously, sharing timid glances and pretending so realistically that sometimes, Wilson forgets it's a pretense. They laugh and bicker, and when Wilson starts coughing, House ignores it and keeps talking, if only to keep the momentum going. Sometimes, this feels like a game of catch, where they're attempting to keep conversation up in the air. Whoever drops the ball first drops the artful guise, and then there's nowhere else to go except down.

House is impeccable at staving off emotions. The day before was like a jolt of reality, and now when Wilson looks at him, all he can see is disconnection. All his smiles are glazed over with falsehood, and his eyes are hiding something deep and dark behind them that Wilson can't know is there, besides from the off chance that it _must_ be.

He gets weaker as the days pass, and one time, while they're walking barefoot on the beach, Wilson's legs give out and he collapses in the wet sand, his lungs feeling like they're imploding in on themselves. He holds a hand to his chest, his hand covering the part of him which is abnormally growing, spreading to his lungs and the bones in his chest. When he coughs, the sputum is pink with blood and it flecks on the sand, only to be washed away by an incoming wave.

Wilson stares at where it was for a moment, holding the imperfect circles of scarlet paint in his mind until House rouses him up with a coarse, "Get up, Wilson."

Wilson looks up at House, whose brows are furrowed, and they both realize there's no point in pretending that the obvious isn't true: Wilson is dying, and there's nothing that they can do about it. There's no point in ignoring or paying attention to that fact, so instead, it floats there in front of them and they pay their dues and try to go on with life as per usual. Which is ridiculous, and insane, and pathetic, but they'd come to that conclusion together - they're miserable and pathetic and that's okay.

Wilson swears that bungee jumping _could_ be fun, so they get on a bus at six AM and spend four hours commuting from one part of Italy to another. The first two hours, House takes turns with Wilson playing Nintendo, but by eight both their eyes are closed and Wilson doesn't give a fucking crap when he slips his hand into House's.

Wilson wakes up coughing at 9:30, and again, the thick taste of white-cell heavy blood in the back of his throat overwhelms his senses. He feels a creeping sense of devastation latching onto him, as if Death has stepped from the doorframe into the front hall, waiting, staring. Wilson imagines Death as wearing a cold pale grin, lips thin and coy and knowing. It's the knowing that catches Wilson by surprise.

Bungee jumping could, indeed, be fun, if the people jumping weren't a gimp and a man with two months to live. When Wilson locks up on the way down, for a terrifying instant he thinks that he's going to die, until his adrenal glands release a surge so tremendous that Wilson forgets about everything, all at once. 

They go to restaurants, where everything is quiet and kind and soft and rain patters on the glassy windows at night. Servers speak Italian, and although neither of them understand what they're saying, they manage to order anyway. Wilson orders a prosciutto sandwich, even though he'll never bother to eat any of it. It's a wonder that he has any skin on him, anyway, starving himself any longer can't hurt.

They talk about diving off rooftops and the stupidity of paragliding in Brazil, all the while, Wilson avoids his meal and House picks off of it, as if the fact that he's no longer eating makes the prospect of taking his food less satisfying. If House picks up on this, he doesn't say anything; he never does. Wilson tries to bring up the fact that he's going to die, soon, and that he's sorry about that, but it's going to be okay - House shoots him down with a glib remark and then it's back to the way it was.

House and Wilson. There are lines. Call them indentations, grooves inside their hearts where they could slot together, or pop out of place. Lines are not optional and not parenthetic, but necessary; brain stems lined up neatly in a row, clamped down tightly to the blood spattered sand. Lines are concrete and finite and real, measurable; there is nothing utopian about a line, the way they cut through your brow and the way they define due dates and how they _are,_ immovable and unstoppable. If lines were people, they'd look like Greg's dad, and they'd lock you outside during the cold winter months, and you would hate them for always being _right._

But something about Wilson attracts him to abstract concepts. He dreams about utopias and heaven and falling in love, and if that's not pitiful he doesn't know what is - but, God, he's _dying._ He doesn't care anymore. If abstraction is the only thing keeping him from breaking down, then Wilson'll take it gladly and hope for the best.

They get home late. House fetches them both beers out of the fridge, and they collapse together on the couch, House turning on the television so they can watch some crappy Cartoon Network-esque show that's only been around for a month or two, destined to end after two seasons. It's in Italian, and they don't really know what's going on, so they drift off, drinking beers silently on the couch.

An hour later, when they're half asleep and smashed as hell, House's arm swings across the back of the chair. Wilson is dimly aware of everything as his eyelids droop, reality and dreams merging into one oblivious, thoughtlessly ignorant state of mind. Faintly, there's a fleeting expression of the pad of House's thumb running its way up and down the back of his neck, lulling Wilson into a peace that he hasn't felt in a long time. His body naturally eases into House's touch, a low grumble ever so often breaking through his lips. As time passes, House presses his fingertips into the softness of Wilson's hair, carding his hand through and occasionally daring to bring back thick strands that are shadowing the curves of his face.

It's not even voluntary when he kisses House. His thumbs have been steadily stroking the base of his neck, and Wilson is too sleepy and too drunk and too catatonic to even know what he's doing. With certainty, he presses his lips gently to House's and tries to take all he can from it, because this may be the last opportunity they may have.

His lips are pliant and accepting, allowing Wilson to press as softly as he'd like, allowing an expression of the words they both can't let themselves say. This is nothing like Wilson imagined utopia to be. He feels drowsy, his hands clinging onto the notion of happiness, underneath House's skin, underneath the pulse of running blood that Wilson can feel in his cheek. Utopia is bright, and full, but all Wilson can taste is the tint of alcohol and desperation. Wilson feels cavernous. Hollow. Wanting.

It's only when House gets up that Wilson can sense the gasping loss of him, like part of himself has been taken away. He seems pounds lighter, now, leaning back into the couch with fear in his eyes, unsure and pitifully terrified.

"What's wrong?" he asks in a voice so hurt and hoarse that he's surprised that House doesn't grab at the chance to make fun of him for being a total "pixie." But he looks at House, and his eyes are too tired for this, so he assumes that he's over analyzing again. Pain is pain is pain, and no matter how much House would like to, he can't avoid it. He sweeps his eyes over Wilson's body before saying gruffly, "You're drunk," and fetching one of the chair pillows to put under Wilson's head. "Go to sleep," he murmurs, worry hidden subtly in his eyes, behind a harsh demeanor. Wilson can hear it in his voice, if only for half a second. He watches House limp away.

***

Wilson once had a dream about a hospital wedding. Amber was the bride.

She looked beautiful. She _was_ beautiful; except she was the one dying and Wilson was the one standing there with the rings in his hands, heavy like boulders. The ICU was decorated as a church, a rabbi standing over them both and reciting The Psalms.

And he could feel God in the room with him, standing besides them both as they smiled at each other, a fragile kind of love in their eyes, sad and tender and adoring.

 _Useless,_ James had thought after he'd woken up. _Fucking useless._

Then he'd cried about it, and thought about how House would have called him a little bitch if he were there, watching him break down over a stupid dream about a hospital wedding.

But now, he dreams of a hospital wedding again, where his hands are shaking with an effort that Wilson wasn't aware he was capable of making. He feels concave and sweaty, his chest heaving with pain, and he can feel people gawk silently as they walk past his room in the hospital.

House is standing over him, a smirk on his features, wearing a bowtie over one of his wrinkly, unironed dress shirts. Seemingly, he doesn't care that it looks like Wilson's been wrought inside out. He looks like shit himself, haggard, even, and it's down to Wilson to decide whether or not that's because he's stricken with grief or if he's just House, or if it's a little bit of both. He didn't even bother to shave, which made doing his hair nicely an outlying chance. House looks like absolute crap, which would make Wilson laugh if he wasn't so focused on inhaling and exhaling.

When House slips the ring onto Wilson's finger, faceless people around them silently clap, smiles on their features that Wilson knows - he just can't place a finger of them. They're unfocused and blurry and unrecognizable, treading softly against his memories. Names come to mind. _Cameron. Chase. Danny. Mom. Foreman. Thirteen. She's dying, like me._ Wilson feels six years old when he thinks about his death; sitting under the kitchen table so no one will ever find him. Death will search and search throughout his home, and he won't be found because he's hiding there. Terrified.

Somehow, House curls up besides Wilson in his hospital bed, although somewhere deep inside Wilson he recognizes that this is impracticable for multiple reasons. House says something that's clever and evasive but they hold each other tightly anyway, and he's soft, and gentle, and Wilson isn't entirely sure when he starts letting out sobs but it's somewhere between the point where he dreams that House is clenching onto him, refusing to let go, and between the point where he wakes up. He doesn't know if he's crying because he's going to miss House, or if he's crying because he's going to miss what House could've been.

Wilson wakes up and it is dark and cold and he's laying on a couch and he's not warm or with House and there are tears streaming down his face and he doesn't know _why,_ and that's the worst bit: he knows there was no possibility of them ever spending their lives together but he's still so fucking _sad_ about it; the fact that for a second, there was a utopia that he could run under his fingers like silk.

***

_"House?" Wilson asks one night, as they're sitting on the couch, eating Chinese. The TV is running in the background, providing a constant hum for them to use as a segway, if they'd like. Wilson and House's eyes remain glued to the screen as they eat, offering up casual conversation and eating each other's shrimp and broccoli._

_"Yeah, Wilson?" House shoves a chicken drumstick into his mouth, ripping off the meat and obnoxiously chewing._

_"You have the tendency to negate everything, and I know I'm going to regret asking," Wilson says in a rush of words, eyes still on the TV screen. "So can you just..._ try, _for once-"_

_"Just tell me, Wilson," House says, staring at a monster truck crush some old 1993 Audis._

_"If you promise to keep your mouth shut."_

_"No. Wasn't that interested anyway," House says, leaning back into the couch, eating one half of a fortune cookie._

_"So at work, today, Rebecca Adler - you know, the one we treated, she had tapeworms..."_

_"You told me she was your fucking cousin, I remember," House bites._

_"She asked me if you cared about me."_

_House finally looks away from the television, a hand landing on his right leg and squeezing, hard. "Are you about to ask me if I care about you? Because that's a little 2nd grade-esque."_

_"I told her you did."_

_"Well, good." House turns his attention back to the monster trucks, putting his feet onto the coffee table. "Can we watch monster trucks now?"_

_"Do you care about me?" Wilson says, looking to House to gauge a reaction. House replies, "Yeah," but that's not Wilson hears, not really._

***

He reawakens to the sight of House drinking a beer in the sofa across from him.

"What time is it?" Wilson mumbles groggily, slowly making his way up from the reclining position and wiping his eyes from the sleep that's collected there. A wave of sharp dizziness comes over him, and he keels back and moans when the cutting throb of a headache suddenly hits his brain. Light is filtering in through the blinds, so he assumes that it must be 7:15, or something. "House," Wilson reiterates. "The time."

"4:30," House answers matter-of-factly, taking a sip of beer.

Wilson doesn't respond well, shooting up off the couch despite a strong dose of pain. He runs a hand through his hair, seemingly trying to ignore it, push past it. _"Shit,_ House," Wilson snaps, "why would you let me sleep that long? You _know_ that I'm trying to-"

House scoffs, "Calm down," and settles back in the reclining, which Wilson takes as a personal offense on his character.

"No, I will _not_ calm down!" Wilson half-shouts, stopping his pacing for a moment to glare at House from where he's sitting. House pauses his drink, slowly lowering the dark brown bottle from his lips and squinting his eyes, as if running a differential. God, Wilson just woke up, he can't take it; "House," he hisses, "I swear to God, if you analyze me right now I will-"

"Buy a one-way ticket in my name?" House prods, annoyed. "You're actually pissed I didn't wake you up. Which, compared to how you're usually pissed at me, is fairly new."

"Did my pleasant bedside manner give it away?" Wilson says angrily, collapsing back onto the couch. "You're a jerk."

"Wilson, calm down. You still have, what, two months? Five or six weeks, maybe even seven?"

"Yes, the last three of those six I'll be spending wilting into agony," Wilson says caustically. "I don't want to miss out on a single day while I can still stand it. I need to jam my last month full of experiences, okay? Sue the dying man for wanting to enjoy himself a little."

"You could just do all the fun stuff and then kill yourself," House suggests nonchalantly, reaching into his jacket to produce a bottle of Vicodin. "Skip the unpleasant part. Being a coward suits you." He opens the cap and tips it into his mouth, counting out two and dry swallowing them. Wilson stares at him for a few seconds, gauging a response, and then he says, "Don't - don't do this." He should feel shaken, but oddly, he doesn't. It's good advice that he's not going to take.

"Do what?" House innocently shrugs, shoving his pills back into his jacket.

"You know what I'm talking about. Pretending you're in pain so you can dish out insensitive insults instead of dealing with the actual issue." Wilson sighs and leans back into the sofa. "When I'm dead, deal with the pain."

"When you're dead, I'm not going to _have_ to deal with the pain," House exhales, a frown appearing on his features. "Or any pain, actually."

For a moment, Wilson's brain stops. He takes the moments that led to that sentence and he tries to rearrange them in a way that'll compensate, somehow; he pins his eyes shut and tries to work through the words, one letter at a time - and every way he breaks that sentence apart, it ends up meaning the same thing. He feels like he's had a compound fracture in his skull. "You don't mean..." Wilson pronounces slowly, his voice trailing off.

"Hey, Wilson," House interrupts, his voice mocking, "has anyone ever told you that overthinking things is one of your more _negative_ qualities?"

"I wasn't overthinking anything," Wilson replies, bringing a hand to his eyes and rubbing them tiresomely. "You were serious, House. Weren't you? You're going to kill yourself after I'm dead."

House shoots back, "I know this plays into your Shakespearean fantasy and all, but I think the fact that we're actually living in Italy satisfies me marginally."

"You're not even going to use the round trip ticket I bought you," Wilson murmurs.

"'In fair Verona,'" House begins, "'where we lay our scene...'"

"House."

"'From ancient grudge break to new mutiny' - hey, you hard yet? 'Cause my 'Little Gregory' feels _very_ happy right now."

 _"House,"_ Wilson demands, his eyes locking on his friend's and practically straddling him down. "Are you thinking about killing yourself?" His voice is almost desperately hopeful. It'd be naïve of him to think it's not true. To speak for the purpose of filling the empty silence, Wilson continues, "If so, I need to know."

 

"No, you don't," House responds, shaking his head. "You _wanna_ know."

"Yeah, and?" Wilson says, eyebrows creasing. "I know you're extremely adverse to the idea of anyone caring about you, but..."

"I'm _not_ depressed."

"And _I'm_ not dying."

 

"That's not... Wilson." House rakes his eyes painfully over his friend's body before taking another sip of beer. "I'm not suicidal."

"I never said that you were suicidal," Wilson sighs softly. "I asked if you were planning to kill yourself."

House meets his eyes, and his expression is pained, almost, as if he's suffering. "Of course not," he whispers. "Why would you - why'd you even think that?"

Wilson leans his back into the couch as a heaving cough racks its way into his mouth. He tastes pungent blood. He ignores it, and says nothing, finally shrugging noncommittally. "I don't know what to say to you, House," Wilson rasps, shaking his head. "It'd be like you to do something like that. Compulsive. Inconsiderate. Idiotic."

"But I thought we were describing you!" House derisively whines, taking another swig. Wilson stands up, swaying treacherously for a few instants afterwards, shrugging it off as House peers closer. Wilson inhales sharply as he starts to walk away. "Don't kill yourself," Wilson says from the next room, as if that'll help. Honestly, Wilson is telling the gospel truth: he doesn't know what to tell House, and that leaves him short on words, words that he feels need to be said. He's searching for something poignant and wonderful to bring House out of his haze, but he can't find anything, and that makes him guilty. He pins it down to tiredness. Exhaustion and fatigue is a better excuse (or rationalization) than the alternative.

"What?" Wilson hears from the living room. "No convoluted over-analysis of my psyche? No assumptions, or propositions, or proposals? I mean, you used to propose to me at least twice a week." House is popping his head into the door frame. "I didn't want you to know, but secretly, I liked the attention."

Wilson rubs his temples, stumbling to the coffee maker and blinking his eyes, slowly.

"Hey," House barks. "You okay?"

"Fine," Wilson replies, pouring water. "Headache from sleeping too long."

House limps over and puts two fingers to Wilson's pulse. "Too slow," he murmurs. "BP must be low." He pauses momentarily, thinking, and in response, Wilson tilts his head back from the sheer aggravation of it. "Can you not read into _everything_ I do?" he almost begs, but House dismisses hi.

"You didn't just blink," he begins. "Your eyelids... They drooped."

"I'm _not_ losing motor control," Wilson insists as he preps his coffee. "I'm tired, I'm dying, I want to go to bed. _Not_ MG."

"The Smiths were a shitty band," House protests as situates himself in front of him, checking for fever, blood pressure, pulse rate, asking questions meant to incriminate Wilson. "How bad's the headache?" "Trouble chewing?" "Double vision?"

 

"No, House," Wilson says, pushing him away and turning back to his coffee. He grumpily fetches his mug (World's Best Oncologist), and pours his coffee straight black, sipping it gingerly before putting it down and sliding it away from him.

"Do you feel nauseous?" House asks quietly.

"I always feel nauseous," he responds dejectedly, leaning back into a counter. It's only then that Wilson realizes that House is practically standing in between his legs, his face _this_ close from Wilson's. They stand there, in this frozen state of uncertainty, swaying in and out, like stagnant tides.

Wilson could kiss him, right now, if he wanted. He _does_ want to. What's stopping him? There is no sadistic writer typing out his story, controlling his every whim (if there were, that person would be a spiteful, horrible shithead). He has decisions, control  - other worldly creatures are for the irrational and those afraid of making mistakes. Wilson isn't a coward. _Kiss him. Kiss him._

He swears that he's about to when House initiates, "Do you remember last night?" He has an unreadable look in his eyes, and it's doing nothing to affect the coarsing of Wilson's belly. He feels like he's missing something, and that's making him incredibly anxious.

"What happened last night?" Wilson asks measuredly. He hoists himself onto the counter, putting space between him and House, and hopes he's wearing what could pass as an acceptable impartial expression

"What do you think happened?"

"We got home, House. I got drunk and passed out on the couch."

House pauses to think, then nods, once, curtly, like his dad always did. "Yep," he says, unnerved, turning away. "Order some fucking Indian."

"We're in Italy," Wilson reminds him.

"And?" House calls from a different room as he walks away.

***

The next week, they stay up later than usual to participate in a festival. The streets are filled with raucous music, celebration and Yuletide cheer soaking into the buildings. Entire landscapes vibrate with energy as the men and women and children dance through the streets, kissing and making foods for passer-bys to snack on, each dress and suit like tangy gumdrops. House and he are flowing with the crowd, their bodies easing through with seamless animation. They feast on the treats they've bought from lamp-lit vendors lining the streets; the warm, invigorated light of their lanterns reflect softly in House's eyes, turning them into a warm green. His pupils are blown dark and wide, miniature black holes, sucking everything in.

"It's beautiful," Wilson says in awe, more to himself than to House, walking barefoot in a quick paced progression to the waterfront. People are lining up there, holding floating lanterns in their hands and releasing them into the breeze. They weave their way through the people spectating, purchasing cloth and jewelry from the canvassed stores to their left and right. "Hurry up, House," Wilson calls, laughter in his voice, grabbing House's bicep and pulling him along the road. The bare pads of their feet burn on the concrete, Wilson's khaki shorts occasionally catching on someone else. House is wearing his stupid Hawaiian shirt, which is open to a fault, his pace quickening as Wilson yanks him forward.

"Hold on, fucking Christ, Wilson," he bites, trying to balance their fried rice and flaked coconut cookies. "Do you want me to throw out your balls? I will," House reassures, "I will."

Wilson ignores him, grabbing the inseam of his shirt and pulling him, finally, to the sand dunes. They slide their way down to the sea, a large crowd forming, lantern held in hand. On the way down, House stumbles into Wilson, and they end up laughing, because God, they feel like kids again. Wilson takes the food from House and puts it on the ground as the rest of the town filters in, all of them carrying lanterns. Wilson senses House smile at the back of his head as he poises his body to release his light into the air... and as a whistle sounds, he lets go. Cheering is heard as the last few are set into the navy night sky, dancing away from them and onto the breeze, reflecting on the water beautifully. After a while of watching them float away, entranced, Wilson is unable to differentiate them from the stars that are so much farther away. 

The rest of the night, they stay on the waterfront, barefoot, drinking fine wines and eating fried coconut, dancing to the beat of a sun worn guitar. Every movement is carefree and every smile genuine, and each stranger he meets greets him like an old friend, taking his hand and dancing in circles. Women and children foxtrot with Wilson; House watches with a small smile on his face, content slipping onto his features amiably. Wilson laughs when a little girl emerges quite abruptly from beneath a dancing couple and takes his hand, leading him into the crowd - House looks _genuinely_ pissed off by this, his eyes shooting glares at the back of her head. "Kid, don't you have some fucking parents or something?" he mutters at her angrily.

Mere minutes later, Wilson's eyes flicker to House, and he's helping the little lady make pirouettes in the sand. The girl reminds Wilson of Rachel: innocent and soft, laughter in her eyes. House meets his gaze for a moment, and his smile slips until the girl yanks on his pinky, bringing him back to the present.

The night is _theirs_. Kindredly indistinguishable stars and lanterns shine down upon them like guardian angels; spirits. House looks to the dotted sky, an elated smile slipping onto his features, and Wilson knows that he feels infinite, too.

***

"Are you sure something didn't happen last night?" Wilson says when they're on the couch, eating Chinese. "You seemed spooked." A blanket is hiding both their legs under it, and they're not wearing socks. Wilson is in a reclining position against the arm of the sofa and his feet are almost in House's lap, teasing his right thigh. If House doesn't know, then he's either blind, or dead.

"Nope!" House replies cheerily with food still in his mouth, shooting a faux smile at the side of Wilson's head. "I mean, besides you accidentally punching out a street sign."

 _"What?"_ Wilson exclaims, turning to face House, "Why would you let me do that?"

"Dunno, it seemed like it deserved it. You were yelling at the sign like it killed your dog," House assures Wilson, nodding. There's a playful smile on his lips as Wilson hits his arm with the remote, laughing.

He asks, "Did you take a video?"

"Yeah, but I'll never let you find it."

"Take me to see it tomorrow," Wilson says. "I'll apologize for all the hurt I've caused."

"Someone probably already picked it up," House replies, shrugging. "You know Italians. Complete doormats."

Wilson gives House a burning glare as he grins at him, eating his Indian slowly. Wilson hands House his plate, still pretending to be unamused, and gesticulating for House to give him more food. It's only when House pours him rice and chicken with a satisfying "ploop" that a snort breaks through Wilson's teeth. "You're an ass," Wilson laughs.

"Doormat."

***

Wilson finds himself using the future tense a great deal, although he has no future.

***

He's getting worse. There are instances where he feels that if he gets up, he might explode; his lungs are caving in on him, his thymus infecting him like some sort of dormant parasite. Sometimes he reaches out in the night, gasping for breath, wheezing House's name. It's all House can do to push him back into his bed with a warm, leathered hand on his chest, eyebrows furrowed in exacerbated worry. He says nothing, in those moments.

He's afraid of what might come out.

He's beginning to feel the pull of death on his brain stem. It feels like a bone, slotting out of place, and he has to pop it back in again so he can keep breathing. He looks at House and thinks that he is a healer and that he could fix him, given the time and the tools. He could clamp his brain stem in place, slot his bones into each other, pull the beats out of his heart with sweet kisses and gentleness. He could make a miracle in his chest. House could be a god, if he wanted. House could do anything - if he wanted.

But it's not about what House wants; they'd already made that clear before. Wilson wants House to want to love him, but it's not about that (was it ever?), and the thought is a crime in itself. Not loving House - it is difficult, but necessary - it minimizes the casualties. If House wanted to, he could become devoid, but he hasn't yet, and that's all Wilson will ask of him. He won't say, "I need you to tell me that you love me;" if House said that, then he'd let go. Life would drain from Wilson like poison in an IV drip.

Impossible possibilities are the only thing keeping Wilson on this earth. He knows this for a fact; cancer patients cling onto life if they have a reason to cling on. As if unresolved business is some sort of time stop, as if they can flash freeze time with an expectant heart. He's seen miracles happen. Small ones. _(A girl presses a kiss to a dying friend's cheek. A man brushes the hair from someone eyes in attempt to voice the words without speaking. Last minute apologies and reminiscing over the nights where everything was perfect. Proposals offered up and tumors not shrinking, but hearts growing, love metastasizing. Small miracles, useless miracles. Weddings in hospitals are wonderous and lovely and trite and futile. Wilson knows that now.)_ He doesn't know if House loves him. That's keeping him alive, and stopping him from living. House would appreciate the poetic irony.

Despite all that, Wilson is going to die. It's okay. It's okay that he's going to die, and it's okay that once he is gone, House will be alone, and he will be satisfied in the ache. And then, _then_ , no amount of wanting will bring him back, no amount of love, or longing, or pretense. There will be no hospital wedding. Their entire friendship will be but a memory, the evidence of it existing hidden, and therefore, nonexistent. In two generations, James Wilson will die a second death. No one will ever know he has lived, although he has created so many more lives. He has changed the course of history, the way that an exponential equation curves into an axis. There will be a point, very far along, past Wilson, past House, past anyone currently alive, where history will have split into a point so divergent from the reality created otherwise that the very fact that House and Wilson were alive will have made them unknown deities. They will have created their own universe, their own timeline.

Currently, though, they are mortal, and that is okay. Gods will die, and the world will spin.

***

The food from Ristorante Maria Grande is amazing. They have minestrone soup, steak, beans and rice, with light parmesan and mozzarella seasoning. For the first time in a long time, Wilson feels healthy enough to eat most of his meal, dining voraciously. He holds up a shallow glass of champagne, toasting with a cheery smile on his face. Pleasant music plays as they talk, and silky dresses slip by their table. It's quietly comforting.

"You look nice," he comments. House is wearing a paisley tie, and he made his stubble more manageable, to the point of cleanliness. He doesn't look nice. He looks wonderful. "Handsome," Wilson reiterates calmly, taking a sip of his champagne.

"Your boyish charm hasn't faded." House sticks a huge piece of meat and pasta in his mouth, swallowing noisily.

"I'd hope so. It's the only thing I have going for me nowadays." Wilson laughs weakly, ripping a breadstick into smaller pieces to chew on.

House's smile slips a bit as he looks down at his food, using a napkin to wipe at the corners of his mouth. "You actually _do_ look terrible," House assures Wilson. "Like a malnourished dog. Or a starving African child."

"Thank you, House. The mirror wasn't working correctly this morning, so I wasn't made aware." He shakes his head a bit, eating a garlic breadstick. "I haven't eaten in a while," Wilson admits quietly.

"I know," House responds.

 

 

"Why didn't you make me eat?"

"There'd be no point. You didn't want to. I wasn't going to force feed you and then have you feel shitty about yourself when you threw it all up."

Wilson's stare is fixed, and then his mouth quirks up in a smile. "Let's not talk about this, House."

"Let's talk about how we can wreak havoc on this restaurant. You only live once, eh Wilson?"

"No, House!"

"No?"

"No!"

House glances behind him, quickly, checking his flank. He whispers, "This'll be a great way to win a hundred dollars. I mean, a great way for me."

Wilson leans back into his chair, surveying the room, when his eyes lock on the waiter. He has dyed blonde hair, a perfect smile, and he's overly touchy with the ladies that walk by him. He looks like a fuckboy. "Fine," he says, smirking. "The waiter. If you throw a crouton at the back of his head without getting caught, I will give you the money."

"You know me. 'Stupid Risk Taker' is one of my many middle names." House's hand darts into his salad bowl, grabbing a crouton. Wilson pretends to act surprised as he drinks his soup, but when House throws the food at the man he nearly snorts and ruins his suit.

The man turns around, looking momentarily confused, before his eyes land on House's. Wilson sees his features contort into anger, and he looks down at his food, talking underneath a handkerchief. "I don't think he can punch you if he's on duty," Wilson says in a hushed tone, laughing through his shortness of breath. House gives a stunted wave to the man before turning back to Wilson.

"Hundred," he demands, sticking out his hand.

"What? No!" Wilson turns away, eating his pasta. "You got caught."

"Define 'caught.' "

"Don't argue the fucking semantics with me, House. I don't owe you anything."

"He just looked back at me. That could have been a coincidence," House protests. "I mean, if you feel something hit your head, you're going to look back at someone, right?" He scoffs. "Give me the hundred."

Wilson sighs heavily and fishes out two fifties, handing it over with a fake grimace. Somewhere in the back of Wilson's mind, he acknowledges that he gave in because House is going to need that money when he's finally alone.

When they leave Ristorante Maria Grande, Wilson feebly hobbles along the road, looking positively delicate. He can feel House behind him, far enough so he doesn't feel crowded, near enough to catch him if he staggers. It's hapless. He knows he looks like a toddler taking his first steps, and he knows that onlookers are watching in scorn. He drank a bit of House's wine, but it definitely doesn't constitute feeling this awful. His stomach is churning steadily, wrapping sensations of nausea tightly around his stomach. "I shouldn't have eaten so much," Wilson says, shaking. He leans down, hands on his knees to catch his breath, and he feels a tender hand on his back, rubbing the crease of his shoulder blades. 

 

 

"Alright?" he hears.

In response, Wilson doubles over and vomits onto the sidewalk, his knees collapsing under him. House nearly falls when he goes down, but he slowly adjusts to a standing position, brushing Wilson's shaggy hair from his mouth. For a moment, House's fingers run through the locks, calming Wilson down as he empties his entire meal onto a patch of grass on the side of the road. "I'm sorry," Wilson coughs, tears in his eyes, wiping vomit from his lips. Another wave of nausea rides over him, and suddenly he's vomiting again, dry heaving, and then he really is vomiting, except it's not  _just_ food - it's blood, too, oh God, it's blood.

He's in a strung up stupor when House leans him into a nearby wall and checks his vitals worriedly. His brows have sharp lines cut across them ( _brain stems,_ Wilson almost thinks) and his hands are forceful and firm because he knows that Wilson can't be either of those things; not right now. He measures his pulse while Wilson keels back from the daze of it all, apologizing brokenly. "I'm sorry," he mumbles hoarsely, hardly aware of what he's saying, "I'm sorry, I should've done chemo, this was a mistake, and I'm so sorry-"

"Shut up," House says gruffly, picking Wilson off the wall. "It's okay." Wilson is now clinging onto the sleeves of House's jacket, faintly aware of the musk of expensive cologne and food. It makes him want to puke out his intestines, how much he's going to miss that smell. He feels desperate, cold, his body freezing and hot all at the same time. Tears spill over his waterline as he shakes his head, pulling House's body to him and sobbing, just for the hell of it, sobbing because he can. "I'm sorry," he hiccups, shivering.

"It's okay," House says tenderly. "Wilson - it's okay."

"No," he cries, "it's not okay, it's not, and - and…" He finally collapses into House, feeling House's chest rise and fall shakily against the heaving of his stomach. He's scared. He's so goddamn scared that he can't see straight, and it's his fault that this is happening, and he's so sorry and he's so scared and he wishes that he was okay, he wishes. He wants to stop crying but he can't help it, and honestly the only thing that's keeping him half sane right now is House, so he holds on, even if it hurts. He's tired of wishing for miracles. He wants to bury himself into House's chest and be afraid in someplace much warmer, even if it kills him, even if he ends up being smothered there. House's hand grabs the back of Wilson's head as he breaks down, clenching on tightly, keeping him from falling to the floor. They stand there, in the middle of the sidewalk, clutching each other, House ever so often whispering that "it's okay," even though they both know that it isn't. It'll never be okay again.

***

Death is a gut-plunging, cold sweat inducing daydream tinted red. Wilson goes to sleep shaking.

***

_(But he dreams that House says something wonderful one night._

_They're in front of the TV and they're watching "the L word" and Wilson's not quite sure why but House says the most wonderful thing and then everything is right; everything is right again.)_

Sometimes Wilson thinks that if he wrote a story, he'd put his thoughts in parentheses, because parentheses are like unspoken maybes that, when taken away from the equation, still allow the sentence to make sense. He's not a good writer. He keeps his "maybes" to himself and ties all his spoken words down to reality, where they make sense, they belong, they stay in place, clamped down _(like brain stems, and fingers clenched together as if they can't let go_ _)._

_(Somewhere, in another hotel bed, there is a thymoma in House's chest, and he is looking at Wilson the same way. As if he is a life vest miles and miles away from him, and House is drowning much faster than he can swim.)_

_(And somewhere else, Wilson is shaven and he has a year, three, and Wilson doesn't know it but he prays it's true - he prays that House might count every day they have together and cherish every moment as if it is a personal triumph to have held it in their hands._ _House_ _sits by Wilson's bedside, ignoring hospital rules like no one else, and Foreman looks at them both and realizes that the term "visiting hours" doesn't apply._

_They've sunken down to the bottom of the ocean together, because it's quiet there, and no one else is alive.)_

_(Yet somewhere else, House doesn't hide behind the facade of his lashes, peeking under them whenever no one is looking. Wilson kisses his eyelids and holds the part of his neck where his brain stem is, twining his fingers with the soft dark hairs at the top of his spine, and he says, "I love you.")_

_(And what if Wilson was a star? And what if House was the galaxy, and what if he loved Wilson and let the oceans of time dwindle so he could be with him; only him, forever?)_

_(Forever and ever and ever and ever and always)_

_(always)_

***

They decide to go to the beach early in the morning, watching the tides fall in and out. There are a few scant people walking their dogs, wearing warm jackets, but House and Wilson walk feebly for two miles along the waterfront until the sun comes to a head on the horizon, timidly poking its way above the sea. They talk to each other about monster trucks and the Jets and how goddamn awful the roster for baseball will be next year, and Wilson theorizes, complacent that he'll never really know.

His gait isn't purposeful anymore. The only reason they walk so long is because they're jointly trying to prove something to themselves, trying to make up more time for the due date. The more they walk, the more Wilson buys into the illusion that everything'll be fine. Then he starts coughing so hard that blood flecks his hand; he remembers.

After three or so miles, Wilson finally falls down onto the wet sand, laying back and watching the sky transition from a deep magenta to a rich red pink. House joins him, huffing in discontent about the dampness of the sand. It buries itself into Wilson's hair, grits catching in his locks, and for the first time in a long time, he feels like he could scream from content. The air smells salty and fresh, his nostrils finally clearing and warm air entering them, releasing endorphins. Wilson stares up at the creamsicle orange of the sky, wind brushing locks from his face, and he sighs without feeling that threatening pull at the back of his neck.

House is just staring down at him. Wilson's not looking back. He just knows.

"I figured," he starts, putting his hands behind his head and laying atop them.

"I'm sure I'll regret asking," House concedes, "but what did you figure?"

"I figured we'd always die together. Or, you would die first." His brown eyes glance momentarily at House, and then he feels overwhelmed so he looks back up at the sky. "Liver failure. An overdose. Something stupid and selfish and completely you."

House is silent, as he should be, listening to Wilson without taking his gaze away. For a second, Wilson almost wonders why he seems as if his eyes are locked to the spot, but he shakes the thought from his mind and pushes forward. "And then... I got _cancer_ _,"_ Wilson comments, a small smile playing on his lips. "I was angry at you."

"That's childish," House cuts in. "I didn't give you cancer."

"But you were the one who should have gotten it. For all the world, you should have," Wilson says, shutting his eyes against the breeze. "I'm glad."

"That you're dying, and I'm not?"

Wilson nods tentatively, his brows furrowing although his eyes are closed.

"How incredibly altruistic of you," House says. "The young oncologist should die instead of an old, miserable bachelor with no friends, who's legally already dead."

"I'm not saying that it's fair," Wilson points out. "I'm saying that I'm glad."

House shakes his head incredulously. "Why would you be glad?"

Wilson almost shrugs. "Because you're my friend, House. And I'm glad you're not dead."

"You could have had... we could have had two more years, Wilson," House whispers.

"Do you want to go back in time?"

"No," House murmurs into the breeze, his voice being carried away. "No. That's stupid."

"I do," Wilson blurts, his eyes shooting open to look at House. He seems... remorseful, though he shouldn't be - Wilson should feel guilty, regretful. "I wish I'd taken everything back. Everything. I wish I had a do-over so I could... I could do it right."

"Who says you didn't do it right," House responds, uncharacteristically gentle. "There's no point in wishful thinking, Wilson. We both know that."

"I know, House. I know." Wilson closes his eyes again. "But if I'd done something else, the night we met... maybe everything would've been different."

"Don't be an idiot, Wilson. Did you do stupid stuff? Yeah, but we all do stupid stuff. Most people just don't get sick and die."

"All the decisions that _I_ made were mine, and if I'd maybe... _tweaked_ my life, it'd be better." Wilson sighs. "Was I a good person? Was my life worth it? Did I affect anyone?"

House looks down at him again, his eyes sad. Wilson doesn't know what that means. Is it incredulity? Is it outrage? Maybe House is holding words in, now. Stuff he always wanted to say, but never could. Wilson stares up at him, his brows furrowing. "Why are you disconcertedly staring at me?" he asks.

"I killed your dog," House shoots back, easing back into the dampened sand on his elbows. He looks to the horizon, his features troubled.

Wilson chuckles. "I think I need a wheelchair," he says, the statement offhand. "Walking is hard."

"I'll pick one up later," House absently responds, his eyes drifting aimlessly. He's looking out into the landscape, almost breathless, the light cutting soft parallels across his face. The sky is the color of House's lips, and the water is the color of House's eyes; dark and brooding riptides curl in the sea, breaking harshly against the sandbar. The dawn light is warm and peach, casting a soft glow upon everything it touches.

Wilson thinks he's just seen the most beautiful thing in his life. Of course, he's not talking about the scenery.

***

_Sometimes, Wilson dreams that House and he are in a hospital, and the whites of House's eyes are yellow, like egg yolk._

_The doctor walks in and Wilson quickly stuffs his hand back into his coat, because men aren't supposed to hold hands like that - and he stares at the doctor and he knows that_ look _he's giving, because he's given the same look to so many dying people, who passed away like falling dominoes. The doctor says, gently, "His liver's failed. We can't get him on the transplant list. I'm sorry."_

_And then it's like Wilson could disappear in a moment, like he could slash lines down every fractional second and bend relativity and become nothing and everything, all at once. He could occupy light years of sadness, extending somewhere that doesn't exist in the dimensions of space-time, and sink into the fabric of those moments and disappear, right there, he could disappear. Faintly, a voice that may or may not belong to House questions how much time they have left. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter._

_When the doctor leaves, Wilson is staring at House with a tortured look in his eyes, and his hands are reaching past every barrier to hold him close, grab the meeting of his spinal cord and his skull. He knows he's supposed to be the one that can help people through death, but he can't, not now. Not with House ._

_Wilson climbs into the hospital bed and clutches House to him until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, House isn't breathing. He cries into his hair until he can't feel anything but agony._

***

The next day, they walk out to the beach with Wilson riding in a wheelchair, a beanie keeping his hairs in place. Wilson finds out that it's actually difficult to move a wheelchair in sand, and House grumbles as he has to push him to their usual spot. By then, children are already playing in the sea, warm breezes lifting off the water and into the air.

"Remember Nora?" Wilson asks out of nowhere.

House stands beside Wilson, one hand on his wheelchair and the other twisting his cane in circles around his finger. He responds, "No."

"I wanted to date her. I thought she was cute, and you pretended you were gay just to screw with me." Wilson shakes his head, smiling. "I still cannot _fathom_ how much of an _ass_ you had to make yourself to pull that off. Which you didn't, by the way."

"Technically, I saw her bra-less," House affirms. "I totally pulled it off."

"You're not that gay," Wilson states.

"Don't put me in a box, Wilson. I transcend societal norms."

Wilson looks up at House for a few seconds, and he's pointedly ignoring Wilson's eyes. "You?" Wilson questions sardonically, "Gay? It's hard to imagine such a universe."

House scoffs, looking to the kids making sandcastles, screaming joyfully. "For you," he jokes, "it'd be a dystopia."

Wilson stays silent, smiling knowingly.

***

_Wilson has a strong notion that in_ _the mornings after they wake up, he presses his ear to the shell of House's chest and he hears a heartbeat steadily thrumming. Sometimes it sounds like raindrops dripping off a gutter after a storm. It's a soft lullaby that spans galaxies, something transdimensional and infinite, and if this isn't some kind of utopia then there's no point in wishing for one in the first place. Wilson senses it in his fingertips and his veins and his arteries, filling him - love, is it? - and he feels satisfied in the ache, knowing that could never be him._

_Wilson could die here. He could die listening to House's heart._

***

Other nights, House shoots himself in the head after locking the bathroom door shut. Sometimes Wilson hears the thud when his body hits the ground and sometimes he doesn't - all he remembers when he wakes up is the sombering fear, soaking him cold. He tries to tell himself that it's only a dream, and the likeliness of this ever happening is nonexistent, but after a few seconds of transient thought Wilson always realizes that this is a possibility.

So he wakes House up by stumbling out of bed pantless, climbing into his bed, and saying his name, over and over, until the word doesn't hold any meaning to him anymore and it's just a noun; he says, "House," but what he means is "home." His friend wakes up and groans something cutting about how "just because you're half-dead doesn't give you an excuse to try to kill me, too."

"I mean it," Wilson iterates. "Don't."

"You just talking to me is making me wanna slit my own throat," House groans, rolling away from Wilson on the bed. "Go to sleep, Wilson."

_"House,"_ Wilson whispers loudly. _"House."_

"What do you fucking _want,_ Wilson?" he protests, pulling sheets over his head.

Wilson falls silent, his lips still posed to say something. Suddenly, he doesn't know what he was about to say, and his legs feel cold. House lets out an angry huff underneath his sheets and he turns to Wilson, slowly propping himself up on the head of the bed. He wipes sleep from his eyes and forces out, "You okay?" even though it sounds like he doesn't really care. Wilson doesn't blame him. It's too early in the morning for this.

"I just don't want you to die," Wilson admits slowly into the dark. He doesn't. He's had daymares and visions and dreams about it, and he can always taste them after he wakes up, like coppery blood. House probably figures that when he's dead, it won't matter - but it will, of course it does.

"Um, last time I checked, you were the one dying. I must have mixed something up. I'll recheck _in the morning,"_ House enthuses clearly, until he's interrupted by Wilson.

"House," he starts, hands up as if to placate, "I know you're touchy about this-"

"Suicide? I'm not _touchy."_

"So just promise me..." Wilson inhales sharply, sweeping his hands as if to illustrate. "Promise that you won't."

"Why would I kill myself?" House says, his voice cynical. "Killing yourself is so overrated."

Wilson's brow furrows as he pronounces, slowly, "Because you're in pain, House. You're always going to be in pain, and someday you're going to think it's too much. You're not going to do it because you think it's underrated."

House falls silent for a moment. He squeezes out the words, "I don't need to promise, because I'm not going to." It sounds forced and harsh, yanked hard enough to snap fibers. He sounds like a rubber band that's pulled back too tightly.

It's so easy to see through a lie like that. He's definitely not telling the truth, at least. House can't even meet his eyes for fear of giving something away. "Or you're saying that you don't need to promise because you know you are," Wilson says measuredly, "and you don't want to break a promise to a dying man."

House can't meet his eyes, and Wilson sees a flicker where House's hands are shaking, where House looks as lost as he does. It's moments like these that Wilson wishes he could slice into sixteenths and analyze, but House would probably start yelling about how much of an ass-kisser Wilson is and how he should just let things be.

It's hard to die, but it's harder to watch others die. Wilson half wonders if House'll be there when he does. If he'll wipe the hairs from Wilson's face and comfort him and lie to him, saying that it's okay - that he can let go of everything, that House'll always be right there. (He won't be there. Wilson will die by himself, quietly. Holding onto life with clammy hands, every breath torturous and wheezing, scraping the walls of his throat.)

"Be nice to someone for a change," Wilson eases out, cleaning the thoughts from his mind. "Try to stop being so damned miserable."

"I told Cuddy, and I'll tell you: I can't change."

"Yeah," Wilson says. "You can. It's hard, and it'll be painful, but you can."

"But what if I can't?"

Wilson grabs House's forearm, and stares into his eyes. "You _can,"_ Wilson insists, his tone reassuring. "When I die, you're going to change, either way." Wilson shrugs listlessly. "Make it for the better," he mentions in a tone that House could mistake for optimism. It's not optimism - it's an order.

"What, are we gonna hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya,' now?"

Wilson ignores him pointedly, using a hand to gesture. "You _can_ be happy," he explains gently, his tone light. "You're _going_ to be happy."

"And you really believe that?" House cocks his eyebrow, continuing, "When you die, I'm going to be alone. And that's when you expect me to pack up my stuff and find a new friend? Go on a manhunt for the abundance of the human spirit?"

"Well, yes," Wilson replies, as if it should be obvious.

"Then you're an idiot."

"I'd rather be an idiot than wrong," Wilson says, leaning into the head board besides House.

"You're one of a kind: you can be both. Hell, you can take over the world with your multi-talents."

Wilson smiles and shakes his head, looking down at his socks. "Don't kill yourself," he whispers.

House doesn't speak for a minute, as if carefully considering the pros and cons of this argument. He seems to be weighing Wilson's statement in his hands, measuring it carefully. Finally, he gives Wilson a slow, sincere nod, looking over to him. "Okay," he concedes, eyes drifting away.

"You okay?" Wilson murmurs, tapping his friend's chest weakly.

"No," House admits immediately. "I'm not. You're going to be dead in a few weeks. I don't know how I'm ever going to be okay again."

"Are you angry?" Wilson rasps.

"Yeah, Wilson."

"Don't be."

"Thanks for the great advice. Your counter-argument really stopped me in my tracks, there," House bites, his voice thick with bitterness.

"You've had people die before, House," Wilson objects softly. "It won't be new. You can handle this."

He expects House to say something biting and cut him down at the knees, maybe begin a bitter diatribe about having pillow talks at three in the morning, but instead House is complacent in his pain, rubbing his leg slowly. "Yeah," he mumbles. "Difference was, none of them were you," House groans. He closes his eyes like he's shutting the world out, his clear blue eyes hidden behind the lines of his lashes, obscuring Wilson's view. He almost wants to apologize for bringing it up, because now House looks like he's in pain, like his leg is spasming.

"Have you been taking your Vicodin?" Wilson asks.

"I'm saving them," House says, moving in syncope with the ticking of the analog in the corner of their bedroom. His expression tightens as the pain gets worse, and he lets out an involuntary shiver when his leg releases him.

"For... who?" Wilson trails, his tone confused. His brow is bent, his head hanging, waiting patiently.

House gives him a judgmental look, expressing his dry contempt with a scoff. "My _other_ friend dying painfully of cancer," he spits.

"What would you do if I wasn't dying?" Wilson swallows, and it's audible - his heartbeat picks up and he realizes that there's nothing else to talk about besides this, because this is the thing he thinks about constantly, toiling through every moment with this throbbing thought poking holes in his consciousness.

"You know what I'd do," House says, a disbelieving smile on his face, "You know - why are you asking me?"

Wilson looks back down at the covers, his hands enthusing every word. "I just... want to hear you say it." He sighs, shaking his head. "Just once."

"I can't, Wilson." House turns to stare at him, holding his gaze. Wilson knows why, because he's done it himself so many times - memorizing chalky outlines of House's features, to take with him before he dies. House whispers, barely letting the words escape him, "I can't," and Wilson can tell that it's absolutely true.

They sit across from each other on the bed, listening to the sound of crickets and cars driving by their windows in the darkness, the noises sinking into the cold shallows of their hearts. Because Wilson has nothing to say to that. Because Wilson knows that it's true. He can't, he just can't - because it hurts too much, because it's too emotion charged, because it'll never be any type of reality. Because everyone that mattered left, and suddenly he looks into House's eyes and it's not perfect moments that he sees, but a void. An ache. They're in silence and they recognize that it's a type of mourning for a sunrise that never came; a dawn that never wrote across the skies. They're sitting vigil for the skeletons of promises that had never fleshed out, and are now sinking below the ground, completely mute.

***

_When they're sleeping, sometimes Wilson draws his fingertips across House's stomach and watches as his chest rises and sinks. His breath sounds like the winds of a summer's night, and Wilson falls asleep under his skies and he breathes in the scent of his skin and he prays to him, because he's the only god that Wilson'll ever know._

***

Sometimes he and House go atop the roof on really hot nights. If the moon isn't obstructed by burgeoning clouds, the cool light reflects off the waterfront like a trillion tiny, white hot fireflies. It makes Wilson think of his grand-aunt. The foxtrot. Fugue in D minor.

***

It happens on a day that Wilson is really sick, and he stumbles out of bed coughing, blood speckling the sheets. House isn't awake yet, and he doesn't want to waken him. As much as House likes to believe otherwise, the sight of your best friend coughing up blood is actually kind of frightening.

Wilson stifles the sound into the crook of his elbow. His heart is palpitating rather fast for someone who's only just gotten out of bed. He's scared.

A wave of nausea rolls over him, and he staggers to the bathroom, holding onto things as he does. He can hardly sit up straight, now, and he's seeing stars whenever his foot makes a definitive step. If he could, he would've stolen House's cane and used it as a sort of support, but it's on the other side of his bed and he can't wake House up by blundering blindly around their bedroom.

He tries to open the door noiselessly, crumpling to his knees in front of the toilet bowl, and then the dry heaving begins, capturing the concavities of his body and rippling across in agonizing waves. A meager amount of pinkish liquid regurgitates, tainted with blood, and it tastes so bad that Wilson dry heaves some more and more blood comes up, until the liquid is a dark, off-color crimson.

He doesn't even know why he's trying anymore. House's Vicodin are in the next room. He's got three weeks, four, if he's unlucky, and then he'll be dead. He could swallow down ten of House's pills and be gone in minutes, completely absent of pain, the relief spreading through him deliriously. The thought relaxes his stomach muscles, and he stops vomiting for a long enough time to finally take in deep breaths.

His body quakes feverishly as he summons to strength to flush the toilet, fingers hanging on the lever. Wilson lays his head on the rim of the toilet bowl, closing his eyes and gasping for air, each breath stunted and rattling. It sounds like the even, methodical shaking of a spray paint canister; he concentrates on the motion of his chest instead of the wet, slick sound - steadily rising, inflating, deflating, inhaling, exhaling, in and out, like tides.

"Wilson?" he hears over the din.

It's House. His body is in the door frame, one arm pressing up against it.

Wilson opens his eyes and looks blearily up, blood dripping from his mouth. He doesn't have to energy to say anything, and if he did, he wouldn't know what to say. Exhaustively, he shuts his eyes and exhales, hardly bothering to pay attention when House finally sits beside him with a damp washcloth and wipes the blood from his lips. His eyes are fully opened, eyelashes hidden from view; Wilson can see the pure anguish - the type that convinces people to cry into their friends' hair and drive cars into living rooms. Wilson wants it all to stop; he wants to freeze time so he can get his bearings back, so he can muster enough strength to clean the blood from his _own_ mouth. This feels like an intentional invasion of privacy. "It's early," Wilson rasps, his right hand pushing House away weakly. "It's too early. Go back to bed."

"No," House says stubbornly, like a kid that's not ready to come back in the house at dinnertime. "I'm with you. I'm staying here, Wilson."

"I need..." Wilson trails, urgency thickening his tone, "I need to take a shower."

"No, you don't. You're already vomiting." He holds onto Wilson's shaking shoulders, clenching tightly. "You can't get up."

Wilson shakes his head shakily. "I'm not dizzy," he wheezes. "House, I feel like crap. Just let me take a shower."

House's hands go from his shoulders to his waist, gently slinging Wilson across his arm and helping him to walk to the shower, a couple of feet away. His fingers accidentally slide up the fabric of Wilson's tee, his hand touching the pale, papery skin that's going to be nothing but dust in a few years. This thought prompts Wilson to blurt out, "I don't want to be cremated, House," and House's hand shifts away from Wilson and all Wilson can think is _no, please._

"Alright," is all House says, and he leaves Wilson at the edge of the tub as he motions for Wilson to raise his arms.

"I can do this myself," Wilson protests, slowly easing his hands to the hem of his shirt.

"You can barely sit up straight," House says, taking off Wilson's tee in one uneven motion. "Let's be realistic, Wilson. I know that's not one of your stronger suits, but-"

"Oh, shut up," Wilson rasps, frowning poutily, and for a second he glimpses half of a warm grin that House stifles by turning away to leave the room. "What?" Wilson calls. "No jokes about male hookers? No Freudian analysis?"

"I'm saving all of those for later," House calls back. Wilson shakes his head and strips of his boxers, getting into the shower and turning it on, with a little difficulty. He knows that House is outside the door, listening for a thump. The fear is infectious, except Wilson's not entirely sure who caught it from who.

They're all afraid, though. Wilson is thankful that House ignores it most of the time, taking moments out of their day to play pranks and wrap cellophane around the toilet seats, because he's a pain in the ass. And he likes Italy; he wishes they came sooner. The nights smell clean and new and crisp, and every sunrise is beautiful; wonderful. Sometimes they sit on the roof and House smokes cigarettes languidly, and Wilson pretends to get worked up over it. "You're going to get addicted to those, too," he usually says, "and then you're going to die of lung cancer and I'll laugh." And House always says, "You'd donate me a lung if I lost mine," and that always pisses Wilson off to high hell because it's true: of course it is. In the early days they went on road trips and sat in Venetian fields, looking up at the sky under tree branches and they felt so full of life that they could yell, despite the abnormality growing in Wilson's chest, besides all the things that had gone wrong in their lives.

In the beginning, it didn't matter that Wilson was in love with House. They had time. Now he's even more in love, and they have _no_ time. At least they're in Italy. Italy is nice. Wilson is happy he gets to die here.

It's when Wilson stumbles out of the shower, slick straight hairs shadowing the thickness of his eyebrows and dripping down the ski slope of his nose that House scrambles up from his sitting position and stands up, looking Wilson over. There's no greediness in his eyes - just pain. He looks like he misses Wilson already. "You used to be fatter," he gripes, a small flash of a smile flickering across his features. Wilson scoffs, but the action is painful - he ends up wincing, slowly making his way down to his bed.

"I thought all you cared about was my boyish charm," Wilson says, a slight laugh gracing his throat. "If you told me that you liked curvy ladies, I probably would've kept my love handles - _oh,"_ Wilson groans, cringing in pain. "Can you spare a Vicodin," Wilson pants, sitting down slowly on their bed.

House pops the cap and tosses one over. Wilson's motor control is shot to hell, and it takes him a minute to finally find it in his lap. "Hand it over, next time," he objects. "Ass."

"That'd be making it too easy."

"Yeah, well." Wilson dry swallows it, gulping hard. When House doesn't go away, he looks up, his eyes expectant. He gestures to the chair, his head shaking as if to say, "Yes...?" but when House still doesn't move from where he's standing in front of him, his stare concentrated but vacant, he gives up. "House," he says, his eyes squinting in almost-worry, "unless you're going to kill me or kiss me, sit the hell down."

For a second, it looks as if House is about to storm out of the room, an epiphany on the horizon.

That's why it surprises Wilson so much when House bends down, takes his face in his hands, and kisses him for all that he's worth.

***

_This is what utopia feels like, oh God, oh God-_

***

Could it have been different?

In another world, where the points of divergence were determined by other worldly gods, would they have waited until their last days?

They could have slept together and paid the rent together and kissed together and they could have died together. They could have touched hands at a certain moment and could have fallen in love like that, brushing knuckles, a coffee mug in one of their hands. They could have been attached, part of the same string, each word they spoke unwinding the other's response. Wilson imagines taking a fishing line in his hands and twisting it around his finger until it is purple from a lack of blood flow, and then pulling the  twine loose - the blood rushes back and he thinks that that is his head and his heart and everything about him. He is stagnant with deoxygenated blood, and waiting for a catalyst to relieve the tension again.

There are so many moments they could have chosen. Wilson could have split the seconds into fractions; into fourths and eighths and thousandths and trillionths and chosen one of those fractions to tell House that it was time. They could have kissed gently in the Princeton-Plainsboro park, and not be wrought from the inside out over Amber and Stacy and Cuddy and Lydia and Julie and Bonnie and Sam. (They were mistakes. They had to be mistakes, or this reality wouldn't exist. Wilson wouldn't be dying. Would he?

Wilson could have torn himself to shreds over House, over the way he did the things he did, the way he lost his mind, how they were odd and unsyncopated. He could have loved his eyes in the way you love the smells of your childhood; missing it at every instance that you were reminded that it was gone. He could have craved his touch, and his voice, no matter what sounds were leaving it.

They could have gotten married and worn a sliver of gold upon their fingers, and been happy and domestic and boring. They could have broken each other's hearts and screamed so loudly that their voices were hoarse and cut-throat sharp. They could have sent each other packing because loving someone who hurt you was too painful and too hateful. Wilson could have left in the snow, crying so hard that the tears froze to his cheeks, chafing the soft skin for days to come.

They could have kissed each other softly after work, and bickered about the existence of God. They could have popped beers and screamed at the TV, because "THE FUCKING JETS MUST _DIE,"_ and spent Thursdays roaring at monster trucks.

They could have slept in on Sundays and looked up lazily at each other's faces, smiling from the knowledge of just knowing.

Wilson could have sat on his desk in office, his legs shoved apart and one hand covering his mouth to muffle his cries. He could have wrapped his arms around House's neck and gasped loudly as House fucked him, hard, panting from the fucking _pleasure_ of it, the desk rocking treacherously under him, his head bent back. He could've heard House's harsh whispers lost in the waves of orgasmic euphoria washing over him.

He'd say, "You were so ready, weren't you?" and Wilson would nod eagerly and moan. "Didn't even wear any underwear," he'd chastise, "You _wanted_ to get fucked, 'cause you can't go a day without me, can you?" and Wilson would keep nodding, just keep at it, pushing himself onto House's cock. "You'd rather get fucked on your desk than wait until we got home, huh? You want me that bad?" and Wilson would say, "Oh fuck oh fuck oh _fuck_ , oh Christ, please, _please,"_ with every thrust.

House could have said, "Wilson, I fucking hate you," and Wilson would have relished in the feeling of the words, the fact that House cared enough to hate him at all.

He could have.

They could have raised children together. Grown _old_ together. That knowledge tears Wilson apart.

***

But this is enough. This has to be enough, or else Wilson will flicker out and he won't be thankful for all the things that have happened in his life. They weren't good things, or even okay things, but they were linear events and Wilson knows he needs to accept them for what they are; what they were. There's no such place as utopia, and because of that, he can forgive himself of the fact that he never made his life as good as he could've. Reality is rarely ever so euphoric, and Wilson needs - he needs - he doesn't know what he needs, actually. It's all so obscure.

But he knows that if there were such a place, it would be here. It would be kissing House as the sun rises behind them both, soft and certain, on the bed they share; it would be touching all those notions and odd fantasies that had built up in his head for years, knowing that this was better than anything he'd ever hoped for; prayed for. There are lines, but Gregory House defies them, he rips them from their place in the ground and he storms his way through with cutting sky blue eyes and he holds onto Wilson because he is everything, because he is a utopia within himself - he holds onto the sound of blow dryers at six thirty in the morning and the off chance that maybe they'll end up together and the possibility of laughter and brown eyes that House could drown in. He could drown, kissing James Wilson.

Wilson feels like a siren. He knows that at the bottom of the ocean it's quiet, so they must be there, although he can still breathe. All he tastes is salty sweat and the faint tint of cigarette smoke. He remembers that House has picked up smoking and that he needs to remind him to quit, and then all his thoughts are vaporized when he hears the sound of cocks easily sliding together in rhythmic syncope. His body begins to tense as his face flushes, and he pins his eyes shut, holding onto House with all that he can manage. _Maybe,_ Wilson thinks, _maybe this is what they talk about when they describe nirvana._

He holds out, although he's shaking with tension - until House gives him three erratic strokes and then he comes with a soundless cry, his mouth opening involuntarily and his body oscillating into House's hand. House hardly has a moment longer before he shifts off Wilson's damp, quivering body, the remnants of a smile on his face, and collapses to the side.

After a few silent minutes of exhilarated panting, Wilson turns to House and laughs, until his lungs hurt and his stomach hurts and everything hurts. "That wasn't even good sex!" he shouts, and then House is laughing too, laughing so hard that there are tears running down his face, because God, this has got to be the happiest day of their lives, it has just _got_ to be.

"I wasn't about to let you die without a good boning," House says, his eyes shining, shallow breaths escaping them both. Wilson looks over to him, his smile slipping a bit. He's so close that all he can see is half of House's face, overwhelmed with an urge to kiss him, and he does kiss him, because he can. Because he fucking _can._ He feels like Kyle Calloway on shrooms.

"I'm serious, House," Wilson gasps, smiling. "That was the worst fucking I've had in a while."

"You haven't had sex in five months, so..."

"Who says I haven't!"

"You must have had it with a corpse, because no one else would accept how fucking lazy you are in bed - _ow,_ fucking Christ!" House gasps, clutching onto the nipple that Wilson just pinched. He laughs through the pain, until Wilson rolls over on top of him and kisses him senseless. "I love you," Wilson breathes through ravished pecks, "I love you."

***

And then sometimes Wilson has happy dreams, but those are the dreams where he's most lucid, where he realizes that when he wakes up, everything will be back to the way it was: achingly normal. Tonight, it's not a dream. He falls asleep curled across House's arm, and House strokes hairs away from Wilson's cheek and stays awake until two thirty, just so the moment can last a little longer. He turns to Wilson and casts his fingertips across the soft depressions in his skin, softly enough so that Wilson hardly stirs. His lashes don't flutter shut until rain hits the windows of their seaside house, and a grumbling, tempestuous storm sets in.

***

It takes a few hours of raining until the harsh reality of the situation makes itself known. They fathom each other in the soft gloom, a fatigued Wilson lazily laying his head across House's thighs, watching a rerun of "Ancient Aliens" in subtitles. Rapid Italian reverberates in the tiny living room, and it lulls Wilson into a hushed sleep. He falls unconscious to the sensation of hands running through his hair.

When he wakes up, it's still raining. There's a blanket on his body but he doesn't know how it got there, or why the TV is running, a monster truck rally playing in the silence. He rasps, "House?" and when there's no answer, his gut plunges into the depths of his stomach. The sudden stimulus makes him nauseous; he staggers up from the couch and runs into the bathroom, his stomach churning violently. The rain picks up, hiding the sounds of vehement retching.

When Wilson finishes, he doesn't have the energy to go back to bed, so he closes his eyes and lays on the floor, waiting for someone to find him. The moment before he passes out, he realizes why this won't work. Why nothing will ever work.

***

He's spent the entirety of their friendship worrying about House, caring for House, _loving_ House - and through all those moments - split into fractions, no less - he's put up with him, eyelashes and all. But there are lines that James doesn't cross, because they are distinctly House and Wilson as opposed to _"House and Wilson_ ," and that entails a certain amount of disconnection. They only touch at a distance, sometimes at work, the back of their hands brushing as they hold case files or flowers for dying husbands. There are lines. They do not call each other Greg and James; they do not hug; they do not comfort; they do not brush fingers; they do not speak to each other when they both know they're too tired to close their eyes; they do not get angry enough to reach out and grab each others' wrists and _scream_ that they lied; _everybody_ lies; Wilson lied; he is in love but there are lines.

He doesn't want to die like this. He doesn't want to die with seams, connecting them like two pieces of cloth and separating them into sections at the same time. He doesn't want eyelashes slicing darkness across any possible emotion he is capable of having.

He doesn't _want_ that. But he knows it's not about what he wants, anymore, and he's back to where he started, sacrificing self for the well-being of others.

When he wakes up, he's going to kiss House awake, one last time. And then he's going to leave him. He can't let House go through the pain of watching him die; he just can't do it. There's nothing worse than that feeling. He will _not_ spend his last moments drowning in the thick, swamping sludge of guilt, every flicker of anguish in House's eyes causing a sharp pain in his gut.

Wilson's going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow - but soon. And there will be no hospital wedding, there will be no goodbye kisses, there will be no reunion, no shaking of hands, no moments to cherish, no utterance of "We did it, we made it." Wilson will die in pain, and House will live in pain.

Forty minutes of pure joy isn't going to change that. Nothing will change that.

***

He gives House a list of groceries. Wilson lies: he rasps, "I'm going to make us dinner," and the guilt is tremendous and shaking. House stares at him for a second, his gaze cynical, but decides against making a fuss. He pulls in Wilson's head and kisses his temple chastely before limping into the rain, swearing obscenities.

Wilson lets himself feel sad for barely a second (he could've said "I love you" at the door, he could've pulled him back in, he could've convinced House to stay, he could have, he should have) before grabbing his suitcase and stuffing it full of clothing from the closet. He doesn't take anything else, figuring that he's not going to need it, where he's going. To be fair, he doesn't know exactly where he's going - he'll probably walk into a hospital, staggering like he's tripping on acid, or into a hotel, waiting out the moments. _It doesn't matter where,_ Wilson thinks. _Just not here._

His packing becomes more frantic as the minutes pass, and soon he starts packing while coughing with his other arm. He still needs to hail a cab, and he'll be goddamned if House comes back inside their home before he's gone. He dumps clothes in - more clothes - and then he accidentally takes a pair of House's boxers but he figures he might as well fucking keep them; they're not the worst thing that Wilson could've stolen.

Wilson stops mid-packing; he grabs a pen that's running out of ink and finds an envelope, writing out a quick apology and a PIN number before stuffing his debit card in there, implying that House should withdraw whatever he sees fit. It feels like a suicide note. That's when Wilson realizes - it effectively is.  
_I_ _'m sorry,_ Wilson writes on the envelope, _but it's not worth the pain._

He knows that House is never going to forgive him; he knows, so he keeps writing, even though the pattering of rain on the window sills urges him to get up and walk away. He's signing his initials when he hears the door open and someone step inside.

His heart crumples.

There are meaningless, almost empty points in Wilson's life that he remembers for the sole reason that they happened. The mundanity of the event did nothing to affect how it had been placed in Wilson's mind. _(He remembers his mother's lilac perfume on the bed stand and a carpenter's sander and yellow flowers with water droplets conglomerating, like two people trying to find each other in a vast, empty space. Frozen icicles and Cary Grant, playing on a loud speaker. He loves scented candles, because they remind him of late dorm room nights in Pennsylvania.)_ He wishes all those memories were gone, so he could stash the image of House walking in, rain trickling down his face and darkening his eyelashes into blackened triangles. Something about this says "important," and he'd mark it down in a calendar to remember every year, if he had years left.

He has weeks. House walks in, wetting the floor, and starts saying words that Wilson can't quite place - until House notices the luggage and the pen and paper being held in James's hand. "Why are you..." he trails, his voice accusatory, diagnostic.

He looks like a Renaissance painting; a still from a cinematic masterpiece; consummate and picturesque and it strikes a dark chord in Wilson's heart when he realizes. _(I love you, and I am so sad to leave you.)_ He realizes that he's sorry and that he doesn't regret as much as he had previously thought, not if those grievous moments had led to this image in his mind, not if butterfly effects managed to bring him here.

House's words bring him back as he stares vacantly at him, thinking about an entirely different world already. "I forgot my wallet," House says, "Er, yours. That brings me back to my previous question... what are you...?"

"I was hoping to be done by the time you got back," Wilson blurts, his voice displaced.

House shakes his head, slowly, his mouth falling open, and in three strides he's across the room, ripping James's letter out of his hand with little to no resistance. He pulls it up close to his face while Wilson backs away from him, his eyes pinned shut from the pain of him knowing. He holds his breath, waiting for it-

"What the fuck is this?" House shouts, shaking it in front of Wilson's face. "Are you some kind of fucking moron, Wilson?"

Wilson mollifies with his left hand, trying to get out the temperate words before Greg has the chance to pounce on them and rip them apart. "I was trying - I was just _trying-"_

"To get yourself killed? You tell me not to commit suicide and then your first instinct is to fuck the fight out of me and then go die in some alleyway somewhere?" House spits, his eyes full of some ravenous fury. He looks like a cyclone; all his hairs are damp and askew, and his voice is dangerously calloused, ripping through what's left of Wilson's chest.

"No, House," Wilson says placatingly, "I needed to leave because I knew that dying was going to hurt you more than me leaving-"

"Don't give me that temperate, cowardly garbage!" House almost screams. "This?" he yells, shaking the envelope, a debit card falling out of it, "This! This is fucking bullshit! All of it! Quote, 'I'm sorry, but it's not worth the pain.' As if you know _anything_ about pain!"

Wilson closes his eyes against House's snarling, unable to take the look that's burning in his eyes. He just wants to lay down for the long sleep, and not have to worry about loving House or caring for House or even _thinking_ about House. Because _all he's ever done,_ all that Wilson has - ever! - wanted has been to _keep House safe._ House isn't worth it. None of this will ever be worth it. Wilson snaps, and he begins yelling just as loudly, because he did this for House, and he's trying to invalidate it, as he _always_ tries. "I did this for _you,_ you fucking ass!" he shouts. "I didn't want you to watch me die like I watched Amber, I didn't want you to watch the last person you cared about leave you! You have _no_ self control-"

"And your fucking brilliant solution is to _have sex with me?"_ House shakes his head disbelievingly. "You thought _that_ would temper my homoerotic love for you?"

Wilson shouts, spit flecking House's face, "IT WAS A __MISTAKE__ _."_

"You didn't accidentally trip and start sucking my cock, Wilson! You didn't tell me that - that you _loved_ me by accident!" House shoots back, his voice lowering down to a volume that is probably more scary than his yelling. "This letter" - he holds it out in front of him - "is so full of bullshit I can't fathom it. 'I did this for you'? You're a shit eating, manipulative _bastard._ The part that really _pisses_ me off, though, is the fact you thought I would fall for it because our salamis had done the bologna."

"I thought you would fall for it because I'm _dying,_ House," Wilson yells, his arms moving in exasperation. "I thought you would fall for it because I'm your best friend, and I have no time left."

"So you admit to feeding me bullshit?" House prods angrily.

"No, I just-"

"Then what the fuck is it?" House shouts, his voice rising again, "You thought it'd be a funny joke to die on the side of the road?!"

"I didn't... want... _to hurt you,"_ Wilson growls, "how many times do I have to spell it out?"

"Until the word looks like it wasn't written by a blind man high on marijuana!" House shouts, ripping the envelope in half. "You _idiot!"_

"I am so glad, House," Wilson snarls. "I am so fucking _happy_ that I never acted on my feelings for you." He shakes his head, tears welling up. "You're not worth it. You're not worth it, House. Everyone left you because that's what you deserve, that's what you _wanted."_

"Yeah, I wrote Santa a letter, asking him to kill you for my Christmas present," House bites sarcastically. "When I got action figures instead, I felt really fucking bummed - can we get back to the real world, now?"

"I am so _happy,_ because you would've sabotaged our relationship until there was nothing left except bitterness and dust - like Cuddy, except worse, because I would've known that you were _the only person possible that I could've loved until the day I died._ The day I die, House." Wilson's tone is suddenly tortured, and he's grabbing House's forearms, running the words "the day I die" over and over under his teeth, like he's trying to express a motive that they both haven't found yet. "I didn't _lie_ to you, House," Wilson scathes, turning back to his luggage to continue packing. "I'm not like you," he says in between pieces of clothing. There's a flash of House's boxers; he ignores them. "I actually care about you-"

"And where d'you expect to go?" House shouts disbelievingly, "This isn't the fucking Mexican border, Wilson! You have nowhere to go, no way to get anywhere-"

"I don't _know,_ House," Wilson says, his voice grating as he stuffs things inside his luggage. "But what I do know," he hisses, "is that once the rush of endorphins wears off, we'll be back where we were and you're going to die knowing that we could have done something more useful with our time together. The reality of the situation is-"

"I'm so _fucking_ _tired_ of reality!" House screams insanely. "You know where reality got me? Huh? It got me thrown into a psych ward! It got me to drive into Cuddy's wall! It got me a dying best friend, who fucks me over by literally _fucking_ me, and then leaving me, like everyone else! Reality is so _stupid_ and I live my life by it and even I recognize the appeal of drowning in booze and painkillers and methamphetamines until there's nothing left of you. Your brother is _lucky_ that he has schizo. At least when you left him, he had a place to escape to-"  
_"_ _ _Don't__ _bring up Danny,"_ Wilson warns-

"The fact that he's a freak and you're a spineless piece of shit certainly made it easier on the both of you-"

_"House!"_

"Reality made you leave; why do you have to analyze _everything;_ why can't you just let things _be-"_

"I was going to leave you anyway!" Wilson shouts coldly, zipping shut his suitcase with fanaticism, "Sooner or later, House, we were going to break. You were going to _bend_ this until it snapped past the point of repair - _eventually_ , eventually. The cancer just proved that."  
_"Fine!"_ House shouts as Wilson grabs his luggage, hoisting it off with a pain in his chest. "Go die in a ditch on the side of the road, for all I care."

Wilson is leaving when he suddenly stops and rotates on his heel to face House, his eyes wet and bloodshot, but furrowed in anger. "I remember" - he chuckles bitterly - "I remember standing next to you in the elevator. I remember thinking... 'Today. Today is the day I'm going to tell him.'"

House's expression softens as rain slides down to his chin, dampening the collar of his tee. He still looks mad, but the anger is soon replaced by disbelieving shock as Wilson continues, his cheeks damp. "For a couple of _years_ it was like that. In the morning, I would wake up with you in the next room, and I would think, 'Today.' Even," Wilson admits, "when you were with Stacey. Until it was thirteen years later and I had five months to live." Wilson takes his index and thumb to the bridge of his nose, pinching. His back straightens. "I stopped telling myself 'today.' Because I recognized that this isn't a utopia we live in, it's _reality_ _."_ Wilson shakes his head, tears soundlessly painting stripes down his face. "I'm sorry that I ever believed otherwise, House," Wilson says, his voice painfully inflected, "I'm sorry that I ever thought that we could ever be together. I'm sorry I thought you could change."

House's eyes are red. His hands are shaking, and he looks paralyzed from the neck down, held up by puppet strings. Wilson uses his forearm as support as he goes on his toes to kiss House's cheek, softly. His skin is tender from the rain, and he smells like the ocean tossing feverishly in the middle of the night. Wilson relishes in the moment, knowing that it'll never happen again, before easing back down onto the balls of his feet. "Yeah," he says raggedly. "I'm sorry. Goodbye, House. You were a good friend."

***

In a different, kinder world...

_Wilson leaves._

***

But in _this_ world, House grabs him by the wrist and forcefully pulls him away from the luggage, desperation in every broken, disconnected movement. House clenches onto him, like he is the only thing left and the world is falling away underneath them both, like Wilson is the only life raft in an ocean that spans universes.

***

Reality is the best thing they've got. They have to settle for less - they just _have to,_ but mathematically speaking, the percentage .00001 is infinitely better than the precentage of zero. So let's say that they lived in a utopia.

Just for a second.

Let's say they were both good, kind people with Messiah complexes, and manipulation was nonexistent and House wasn't staring at the Vicodin pills like vipers about to be let loose. Let's say they had a white picket fence. Let's just _say_ that they had kids. Let's say that the universe rerouted its own fundamental principles just for these two, so they could finally be happy. Let's theorize. _Life is fair._ Let's say that.

Have the universe take away all those moments that made them _them_. Amber doesn't die because Wilson never meets Amber, Cuddy doesn't leave because House doesn't diagnose for a living - he's a chef. His leg doesn't hurt because it's not there - he agreed to cut it off - and Wilson doesn't take antidepressants because he's not an oncologist. He's a stay at home dad. Loves his two surrogate children. No - they're not even surrogate - let's make it an mpreg. Why the hell not?

House isn't bitter because he grew up with his real father, and Wilson isn't an irrational, irredeemable idiot that necessitates being self-sacrificing to the point of masochism because his brother is a lawyer at some great firm that defends cases about puppies and bunny rabbits. Lawsuits are obsolete, the universe is in harmony, and House and Wilson are so fucking happy that they both recognize it's disgusting.

Let's take this moment away from them: House isn't clutching onto his dying best friend to keep him from disappearing into the night, soaking wet and freezing cold. Wilson doesn't feel like someone is physically plunging their hands inside his chest and squeezing on his heart, preforming an exploratory surgery on him while he's wide awake.

They're happy.

Their core constituencies are interrupted and worthless because of the very same reasons they crave: their lives are worthwhile.

Who are they, then?

_Who the fuck are they?_

***

Utopia isn't all it's cracked up to be. Wilson wants a Maserati, but would he trade one for a maybe?

No. He wouldn't even trade his pain for a maybe.

Wilson regrets a lot of choices in his life, but he didn't hang them on possibilities, luck, no - his choices were _his_. His reality was _his._ House was _his._

Until the day he dies, House is his. Wilson will spend the rest of his life with House. That will be enough.

***

"Don't leave me, Wilson," House breathes tonelessly, clenching his friend close to him. "Please, don't leave."

***

_Fuck_ utopia.

There's no such place.

 


End file.
